How Fast is Apple's First-Ever 5G Modem? The Results Are Surprising

[Allen_Wentz]

So, do you think the buffers on the chip's external pins use a significant amount of power? Integration might save that, but what else? I think mostly it would make the total device physically smaller

On-chip modems presumably will allow: physically smaller; less controllers stealing clock cycles; physically closer to CPU [therefore faster]; more suited to integrating with Apple's Unified Memory Architecture; better in-house control of supply/costs; more efficient. And [importantly] probably less expensive in the long run.

Notes:
1) having the modem on-chip allows chip architecture to be optimized in ways that can include the modem. I.e., creative chip engineers have more options.
2) Apple's Unified Memory Architecture and having more stuff like modems on-chip also means having more RAM will be increasingly beneficial. As has been the case for 40 years now.

 

[cocky jeremy]

Nice performance numbers. Would have also been nice to see a better price now that they aren't having to pay Qualcomm licensing fees.

Their entire purpose is to make money. Why would they give it up?

 

[klasma]

"Geekerwan's testing found the iPhone 16e had an average power draw of 0.67W, versus 0.88W for the iPhone 16, which is indeed around a 25% improvement in efficiency."

More precisely, that’s a 23.9% improvement. 🤓

 

[10anta]

Many other reviews are showing poor numbers, especially in China where mid-band 5G is very high speed.

C1 unable to reach 1 Gbps compared to X71.

SNR and signal consistently worse than X71.

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Honestly couldn’t care less whether a phone gets 1 Gbps download speeds. When is that useful enough to matter in real life?

Much more pleased to hear about day to day use ability and improved battery life.

 

[10anta]

The point is not Apple modem speeds. The point is that this is a short step away from Apple having the modem on-chip, which will be hugely efficient.

And potentially would allow cellular enabled MacBooks

 

[klasma]

I have 5G disabled, for battery reasons, on my 16 Pro and I can't tell any difference from when I had it enabled.

Depends on the network and location. My carrier switched to prioritizing 5G last year, which made 4G markedly worse in my area. I previously had 5G disabled to save battery as well, but this made me enable it.

 

[Howard2k]

That seems like a remarkably successful version 1 story. Excellent.

 

[Cirillo Gherardo]

I don't care about mmwave. I don't even care about peak performance.

Show me how much power the C1 draws when signal is low. This is biggest problem with cellular modems, their obscene power draw when trying to boost low signal.

 

[Biro]

Just as I thought: There are greater differences in speeds between 5G networks than between the C1 and X71 modems. If anything, the C1 is a bit faster in the real world than the Qualcomm chip. The “I hate change” crowd can stop complaining now. But they won’t.

 

[hoodafoo]

yikes! I have a pentium Celeron that's smaller than that C1 chip

 

[thefrost]

That's not bad.

 

[danpass]

I thought they had some sweetheart deal with Qualcomm. Why the R&D for an in-house modem?

Am I thinking of the wrong company? Maybe it was AMD ....

-

 

[FlyingDutch]

That’s good news, but not unexpected: Apple engineers are good, as A and M chips demonstrated.

 

[Mother Nature]

iPhone 16 is X71. You'll also notice Apple's press release don't say anything about C1 performance. If C1 matched X71, Apple would boast it.

U.S. has relatively slow and undeveloped mid-band 5G, which isn't surprising. So tests will show C1 doing "as well as" Qualcomm for low speeds.

Apple can't compare both simply because C1 lacks mmWave 5G

 

[SactoGuy18]

If this phone can match the speed of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X70 on T-Mobile USA's mid-band 5G network (essentially using the former Sprint frequency ranges), then Apple has a surprising winner with that modem. I was getting 1,600 megabits/second download speeds on my iPhone 16 Plus with the Snapdragon X70 modem, and if the C1 can match that without needing mmWave....

 

[JohnC1959]

Eager for the day when these performance numbers for 5G matter to me. Where I live I just got about 150mb/s on LTE and around 75mb/s on 5G on my 16 pro. I find that plenty fast for most of my mobile needs but still who wouldn't want faster.

 

[xpxp2002]

Speed isn't as much of a potential concern as reliability. The Intel modems struggled greatly compared to Qualcomm at the fringe, when holding on to a signal was harder. That's what I'm curious about with the C1.

Came here to say this. I don’t care if LTE or n77 performance are comparable in average or above-average signal conditions.

None of these reports even mentioned latency comparisons. The Intel modems sucked in cell-edge situations and audio cutouts were frequent with phone calls all the time. Cell-edge performance is still kind of rough with the X70 on AT&T (albeit mostly still Nokia RAN here). But those are the metrics where the difference will be noticed.

I will hold my breath on this C1 until the important tests are available.

 

[jntdroid]

I don't care about mmwave. I don't even care about peak performance.

Show me how much power the C1 draws when signal is low. This is biggest problem with cellular modems, their obscene power draw when trying to boost low signal.

That one video from China showed it was drawing less power than the 16's modem in a low signal environment - albeit in their self-created 5G lab environment.

 

[redmac]

Has nothing to do with mmWave because mid-band 5G goes up to around 3 Gbps. China doesn't use mmWave either. Basically for an apples to apples comparison, the C1 is slower and less able to latch on to a weak signal.

More importantly however, C1 doesn't have as good an SNR, signal power, and signal quality compared to X71 as shown by reviewers. This translates to little or no reception in enclosed structures, parking garages, elevators, subways, etc.

I know that it's nothing to do with mmWave, but I gave that example because it's the relevant one for the US users and most MR readers, as we don't leave in China.

What I meant was that the users of this phone are buying it knowing that it will not reach 1Gbps or higher speeds. The lack of ultra high speed isn't a deal breaker because very few people will ever need or notice that.

As I previously mentioned, I have Gigabit internet service at home, and the daily experience is not significantly different than a 200 Mbps service even when three of us are watching 3 different 4K streaming videos simultaneously. With the home internet, at least, sometimes I upload or download my 3 TB iCloud Photos library to take advantage of those speeds. What do you do on your phone to notice a difference when the speeds are faster than 500 Mbps?

Lastly, reviewers in US don't report little or no reception in enclosed structures. Why is it an issue in China?

 

[Makosuke]

More or less as fast as the competition is enough to make this a perfectly acceptable replacement by any standard. More or less as fast as the competition and more power efficient is an absolute no brainer and huge win for actual use.

That said, the high end of speed on cellular connections is kind of overkill for virtually any regular consumer use cases other than tethering. Once you get above the high tens-of-Mbit, I'm struggling to think of a situation outside tethering where the average consumer would be likely to notice even a 50% difference in speed apart from the single use case of uploading a video you edited locally to social media... and that's upload, not download speed. Over-the-air app installs, I guess? Video streaming is the big data hog, but that's streaming not downloading, so past a point the max speed really doesn't matter.

I probably qualify as a "power" phone user--lot of work, decent amount of entertainment, many paid and free apps installed, and I actually do stuff with local storage--and I can think of exactly three times in recent memory other than tethering where the cellular download speed was even noticeable, and I might actually notice the difference between, say 100Mbit and 600Mbit:

- Once when I was doing an over-the-air app download of a large app from a remote location
- Once downloading about 1 GB worth of offline map data before leaving cellular coverage
- Downloading a full-CD images of a PS1 game (that I own physical media of!) to try an emulator

For the vast majority of my use, though, I can rarely even tell the difference between pokey old "just" 5G, and the 5G UC with about a 400Mbit speed closer to my house. This includes thousand-page PDFs, much cloud document use, hefty graphics files, and plenty of mundane web and streaming stuff.

 

[redmac]

More precisely, that’s a 23.9% improvement. 🤓

In other words, the Qualcomm modem uses 31.3% more power.

 

[FlyingDutch]

I thought they had some sweetheart deal with Qualcomm. Why the R&D for an in-house modem?

Am I thinking of the wrong company? Maybe it was AMD ....

-

They were basically “forced” to make a deal with Qualcomm… this was more than expected.

 

[klasma]

In other words, the Qualcomm modem uses 31.3% more power.

While the C1 modem only uses 23.9% less power. Funny how that is.

I guess the neutral thing to say is there is a 0.12 orders of magnitude difference.

 

[macdaddy43]

With the hopes that these will only continue to get better, this is a very bright spot in the Apple lineup. These could be trickled down to nearly every Apple device without having to pay Qualcomm for these modems. Add in future efficiency improvements, this is a win for consumers. Competition is always good.

 

[JPack]

I know that it's nothing to do with mmWave, but I gave that example because it's the relevant one for the US users and most MR readers, as we don't leave in China.

What I meant was that the users of this phone are buying it knowing that it will not reach 1Gbps or higher speeds. The lack of ultra high speed isn't a deal breaker because very few people will ever need or notice that.

As I previously mentioned, I have Gigabit internet service at home, and the daily experience is not significantly different than a 200 Mbps service even when three of us are watching 3 different 4K streaming videos simultaneously. With the home internet, at least, sometimes I upload or download my 3 TB iCloud Photos library to take advantage of those speeds. What do you do on your phone to notice a difference when the speeds are faster than 500 Mbps?

Lastly, reviewers in US don't report little or no reception in enclosed structures. Why is it an issue in China?

AT&T and Verizon are already offering 2 Gbps mid-band 5G in some places.

It's relevant because high speed typically translates to better speeds when the signal is marginal. That can be the difference between connecting and not connecting. That's the problem with Intel modems.

Which U.S. reviewers have tested (video) the 16e in marginal locations? Whether it's a parking garage, elevator, or subway? Most of them simply report it's decent without any data, maybe a single run of Speedtest. That's it.