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The first smartphones that support Wi-Fi 7 could start coming out as soon as the second half of 2024, according to a new report from DigiTimes that cites IC backend houses and inspection labs.

wi-fi-7.jpg

Wi-Fi 7 is able to use 320MHz channels and it supports 4K quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) technology, ultimately providing up to 2.4x faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6 with the same number of antennas.

Positioned as the next major generational Wi-Fi technology evolution, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to provide speeds of "at least 30" gigabits per second and could even hit 40Gbps, according to the Wi-Fi Alliance. It will offer speeds fast enough for next-generation AR/VR, 8K video streaming, and gaming devices.

Wi-Fi 6 features speeds of up to 9.6Gb/s, and WiFi 5 maxed out at 3.5Gb/s, so WiFi 7 will be a notable improvement when it launches. There is no word as of yet on when Apple might implement Wi-Fi 7, but it is worth noting that Apple has not even adopted Wi-Fi 6E, which has been available since 2019.

Apple devices are still using Wi-Fi 6, and there is a possibility that Apple will stick with Wi-Fi 6 until the launch of Wi-Fi 7, skipping Wi-Fi 6E entirely. DigiTimes suggests that with the launch of Wi-Fi 7 on the horizon, Wi-Fi 6E is "just a transitional technology."

Wi-Fi 7 will come first to routers and notebooks before making its way to smartphones. In January, MediaTek demoed Wi-Fi 7, and Intel has said that it plans to adopt Wi-Fi 7 in PC laptops by 2024, with the technology appearing in major markets in 2025. Qualcomm is also working on Wi-Fi 7 chip options that are expected to appear in the same time frame.

Article Link: First Smartphones With Faster Wi-Fi 7 Coming as Early as 2024
 
It will stick with Wifi 6 unless it figures out how to design proper network hardware.
 
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My first question after reading this post is: how is WiFi 7 on power consumption? Because if it’s super fast but makes my iPhone very hot and drains my battery, I’d rather stay on WiFi 6. I don’t know if this new WiFi 7 uses the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band, or completely new bands.
 
Wi-Fi 6 features speeds of up to 9.6Gb/s, and WiFi 5 maxed out at 3.5Gb/s, so WiFi 7 will be a notable improvement when it launches. There is no word as of yet on when Apple might implement Wi-Fi 7, but it is worth noting that Apple has not even adopted Wi-Fi 6E, which has been available since 2019.
Wi-Fi 6 might be theoretically possible to reach 9.6 Gbps, but no consumer solution reaches anywhere near that. Most consumer Wi-Fi 6E routers maxes out at 1.3 Gbps, with few hitting 3.6 Gbps under most ideal scenarios.

With my own non-6E Wi-Fi setup, which comprises of several Eero Pro 6 routers, the fastest speed test I logged against 1 Gbps fiber Internet was 598 Mbps.
 
So, I upgrade to WiFi 7, @ 30 to 40 gigabits, and hook it up to my 400 megabit internet.

So is there some kind of “Black Magic” or ground unicorn horn in this equation, or am I missing something ?

My NAS uses spinning hard drives, so even if I upgraded it’s NIC to 40 gig, what does it give me, or anyone else really ?

Seams like it’s akin to driving a 911 Turbo S in rush hour traffic
 
30Gb/s???
Still waiting for WiFi 6 to achieve anywhere near its peak speeds in the real world.
My Eero WiFi 6 router is connected to a 2Gb/s fiber connection and yet my brand new iPhone 14 Pro can barely break 500Mb/s standing 15 feet from the router.
I exceed 700mbps on my iPhone to my WiFi 6 Unifi Access Point and I am more than 15 feet away.

Are you using sufficient chancel widths to allow higher speeds?
 
Lower frequencies can more easily penetrate solid objects (walls, etc), so the WiFi 7 320Mhz channels should perform far better than existing 2.4 / 5 / 6 GHz WiFi bands in many real-world indoor scenarios, right?

320MHz refers to the width of the channel... not frequency band.

WIFI 7 will still operate at the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz frequency bands.

I don't think penetration will necessarily be improved by the wider channels. But we'll have to see.

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