C1 seems to be "fine" by all respects. It's missing a lot of the edge-case capabilities that the Qualcomm modems support, but it's not nearly the disaster that the Intel modems were (I know; I had an iPhone 11 with Intel modem and it was pretty bad). Better to evaluate whether you need mmWave support since it's missing entirely from the C1. Basically, people who need it tend to know they need it. If you don't know if you need it, you most likely don't.
All that being said, it's still 1.0 silicon. I don't think anyone would fault you for waiting until a C2 or C3. Apple is doing a great job with their custom silicon efforts, but they're not immune to mistakes or unforeseen problems. However, there are enough 16e's out there at this point that if there was some huge failing in the modem, we would have heard about it by now. By all respects, Apple got it right.
This was partially what motivated me to buy now—My plan was to buy a 16 Pro at some point this summer. The tariff instability encouraged me to move that up. No one can guess how much or even if tariffs will affect the prices of Apple gear. But my personal feeling is Apple products are already priced at the top edge of their value. Any increase in price, regardless of the reason, will push them toward being above what I'm willing to pay. I'd rather make some major purchases now and be able to safely sit on the sidelines for years to come while all the geopolitical mud-throwing goes on.
