That is why I don't like Apple under TC. Products have some problem/limitation that should not exit but they do it intentionally so we keep upgrading.
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Apple's New N1 Chip in iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone Air Has a Wi-Fi 7 Limitation
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That is why I don't like Apple under TC. Products have some problem/limitation that should not exit but they do it intentionally so we keep upgrading.
Not a Tim Cook thing.
This happened under Steve Jobs all the time, e.g. the original iPhone lacking 3G (and only getting copy & paste at version 3.0).
If anything, it was Jobs who said "real artists ship". Yeah, you can keep engineering until it's a tiny bit better, or you can push it out the door today and have another version next year.
Ah interesting... to be honest I'm inclined to believe you, even though I seem to remember hearing it did as I originally joked. Nothing is ever fully clear so thanks for the update!
WiFi 7 is much more than just 320 MHz channels. For example, WiFi 6E is simply WiFi 6 extended into the 6 GHz band. WiFi 7 introduced new physical layer and medium access control capabilities, not just bigger channels.
Apple’s implementation still qualifies. You are correct though that it’s not a completely full implementation of WiFi 7
Explain why it’s 6E and not 7. 320 MHz channels are the only thing that differentiates 7 from 6E?
oh I totally agree with you about the need for gigabit speeds on a phone, there's no point with today's use cases.
But as immersive computing (AR and VR) become more widely spread, it's likely that the need for speeds will increase.
If history has taught us anything about technology it's that technology will expand to use any excess energy or computing power that is available to it over time.
By design, the primary advantage of Wi-Fi 7 is it's ability to more efficiently handle more simultaneous clients in radio-noisy environments. Single client performance is only incrementally better than Wi-Fi 6 ... or even 5 Ghz Wi-Fi 5. Similarly, the "reach" of Wi-Fi 7 isn't notably different than Wi-Fi 6.
Upgrading one device, like your iPhone, is unlikely to change your device's "network speed" unless or until you update all your gear.
Well said, lol… succinct! To add some “numbers” Wi-Fi 7 @ 160mhz has a peak connectivity speed of 23 gb/s vs 46 gb/s @ 320mhz. Since in America we still salivate over absolutely anything 1 gb/s or higher, this difference is literally meaningless.
I really hope the N1 chip will help. I live in area where cellular service is really bad. I have Wi-Fi 6 in my home.
Most people use their phone to stream media, even Netflix or YouTube isn't going to stress WiFi 5, let alone WiFi 7 160Mhz. I can see, maybe, a few Pros with large 10gbps NAS on their network who want to offload ProRes RAW video a bit quicker, but I suspect they are a small minority.
This isn't really intended as an argument, however - I just wanted to point out that 6E extending "into the 6 GHz band" had the practical effect of adding 7 wide channels - WiFi 6 only has a single 160 MHz channel; 6E has eight.
That’s for the N2
It really is a non-issue tho. Most people don’t have service fast enough, and for the few who have WiFi 7 + service fast enough + do anything on their iPhone that would benefit from it (looking at the 2 of you out there that meet this criteria) it makes almost no difference.
Edit: I found one of you as the person who disagreed with this post. I demand that the other one of you show yourself immediately. Also, dearest ROLLTIDE1, Hail State
It really is a non-issue tho. Most people don’t have service fast enough, and for the few who have WiFi 7 + service fast enough + do anything on their iPhone that would benefit from it (looking at the 2 of you out there that meet this criteria) it makes almost no difference.
Edit: I found one of you as the person who disagreed with this post. I demand that the other one of you show yourself immediately. Also, dearest ROLLTIDE1, Hail State
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Aww Macrumors has been trolling the comment section after all, thanks all. I certainly posted plenty asking about this over the last year.
To everyone else saying what people do and don’t need in their “Pro” phone, you can eff right off.
Signed, a tech enthusiast, general nerd, adult with money, and a network engineer.
P.S. (not you macrumors) A “router” has nothing to do with WiFi internet people, it’s an Access Point (AP) that has to do with the propagation of WiFi. If you got a box from
your ISP you may colloquially refer to it as a router, and it presumably is, but it is then also an AP if it provides WiFi. Also, due to the peculiarities of overlapping channels and RSSI and various other things, the fact they are limiting this means that the 5GHz band needs to be tuned down to 80Mhz to run the 6GHz at the 160MHz to get any crack at using the MLO features that Apple DOES support that makes it “WiFi 7”. So other than running multiple SSIDs at different speeds and channels, there is no one way to have a homogenous network that runs WiFi 7 with an Apple device around without hamstringing everyone who only has 5GHz capability. So yes, this is an artificial limitation and yes, it affects more than people that have WiFi 7 APs. Finally, the theoretical maximum of WiFi 7 is in excess of 99.99% of ISP download speeds (forget upload) for all of NA. When you post that comment, remember that it’s not all about external speeds, some people work from home and our internal networks (like most peoples) are far faster than our external connections. So this limitation also impacts internal speeds to things like network attached storage and device to device communications as well.
I don't come after you for having slow speeds at your house, buy what you can afford and what works for you. Don’t come after me, or anyone else for our needs. I didn’t call the phone a “Pro”, Apple did.
To everyone else saying what people do and don’t need in their “Pro” phone, you can eff right off.
Signed, a tech enthusiast, general nerd, adult with money, and a network engineer.
P.S. (not you macrumors) A “router” has nothing to do with WiFi internet people, it’s an Access Point (AP) that has to do with the propagation of WiFi. If you got a box from
your ISP you may colloquially refer to it as a router, and it presumably is, but it is then also an AP if it provides WiFi. Also, due to the peculiarities of overlapping channels and RSSI and various other things, the fact they are limiting this means that the 5GHz band needs to be tuned down to 80Mhz to run the 6GHz at the 160MHz to get any crack at using the MLO features that Apple DOES support that makes it “WiFi 7”. So other than running multiple SSIDs at different speeds and channels, there is no one way to have a homogenous network that runs WiFi 7 with an Apple device around without hamstringing everyone who only has 5GHz capability. So yes, this is an artificial limitation and yes, it affects more than people that have WiFi 7 APs. Finally, the theoretical maximum of WiFi 7 is in excess of 99.99% of ISP download speeds (forget upload) for all of NA. When you post that comment, remember that it’s not all about external speeds, some people work from home and our internal networks (like most peoples) are far faster than our external connections. So this limitation also impacts internal speeds to things like network attached storage and device to device communications as well.
I don't come after you for having slow speeds at your house, buy what you can afford and what works for you. Don’t come after me, or anyone else for our needs. I didn’t call the phone a “Pro”, Apple did.
This is such a non-issue its not even funny.. and I say that as a network engineer, there is a stupid amount a bandwidth available with 160MHz wide channels. I limit all of my networks to 20MHz wide channels to reduce ACI/CCI in dense environments.. Literally NON of my users complained, and my trouble tickets have dropped due to 'issues'.
99.999% of users are aware of, nor care, about the wireless channel width.
99.999% of users are aware of, nor care, about the wireless channel width.
Funny you mentioned it, because not even 320MHz, for 160MHz I only briefly tuned my UniFi APs to use it, just to test if the iPhone 16 Pro WiFi7 actually got meaningful improvement over 15 pro's WiFi 6E (it did not). Right away I switched my setup back to 6GHz at 80MHz just to get back having a realistic range. If left at 160MHz, I think the phone can drop itself if I just turn around a corner into a corridor away from the WiFi7 AP.
As it stands right now, high bandwidth WiFi7 deployment requires the AP to be within direct line of sight of the device. In fact I maintain a really conservative plan, for 5GHz I do 40MHz, 2.4GHz I do 20MHz, again range matters a lot, at least in my premise. There are many neightbours so a lot of noises as well, my studio is a mutli-floor industrial building.
Ok, sure... I know some folks really like to be on the bleeding edge of technology and get the best possible performance out of their devices, so I get that this could be frustrating for that crowd. But these chips aren't "crippled" and 99.9 percent of people using these iPhones for 3+ years won't have any issues with WiFi speeds in that time (especially in the US where "broadband" speeds are mid at best). I would go as far to say that in the history of iPhone usage, a vanishingly small number of people (if not zero) have updated their phones, ahead of when they otherwise would have, because of WiFi performance. So no, this isn't a ploy to churn more sales. Get real.
They do love to spec-brag when it suits them. You always heard "octo-core, this. 16GB RAM, that" for years. ASUS ROG phones with giant heat sinks, all that junk. Then somewhere around the iPhone X, Apple Silicon just sort of jumped ahead 1 or 2 generations in performance benchmarks compared to med-to-high-end Qualcomm SoC's and suddenly Linus Tech Tips doesn't think performance matters on phones any longer.
Which raises the question
- how many Android users have a phone that uses 320 MHz Wi-Fi 7
- how many of them actually benefit from it
And then, more generally: how many people, when deciding on a device, look purely at its specs, and compare multiple options? Or is it rather that they far more vaguely buy what they hope they'll be happy with?
For a phone, this is plenty fast enough.
It was very disappointing that Apple didn't include Wi-Fi 7 in their latest computers (e.g. Mac Studio, Mac mini), but for an iPhone not utilizing the standard fully doesn't really matter.
Still happy with my Wi-Fi 7 mesh, though.
It was very disappointing that Apple didn't include Wi-Fi 7 in their latest computers (e.g. Mac Studio, Mac mini), but for an iPhone not utilizing the standard fully doesn't really matter.
Still happy with my Wi-Fi 7 mesh, though.
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That's cute but totally BS. The vast majority of people do not have separate APs. What they have is called "WiFi Routers" by the device manufacturers themselves (here is an example).