It might also happen that Apple accepts the patent risks. They have won some battles and lost some, but the net total has been close to zero compared to Apple's net profit. If you are big enough, you do not need to worry too much about stepping on others' toes.
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Kuo: Apple-Designed 5G Modem May Debut in iPhones as Early as 2023
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That’s true. But Intel never released a 5G product.
What makes a good modem? There are a couple of parameters, for example:
- frequency / protocol support
- maximum transfer rate
- noise floor (link budget, sensitivity)
- power consumption
- mimo support (more than one antenna)
- Doppler compensation (maximum transceiver velocity)
I've been involved in RF system design, and I have learned there are very many parameters to optimize. If you get to design the complete system, and if you have a clear use case, you have more freedom in optimization. Apple does not have control over the network standards, but it has an end-to-end chain in the terminal (smart phone) from the CPU to the antenna. That gives some competitive edge.
OTOH, it is not likely Apple is able to create something as disruptive as M1. Radio systems are physics-limited, and huge improvements in sensitivity and power consumption are quite unlikely. And even if you doubled the sensitivity (3 dB better), most users wouldn't notice.
Umm, before you start comment on something making sure you have proper knowledge on it? There is no A1. The A series started with A4 in iPhone 4.
iPad 1 got A4 in January 2010 before iPhone 4 in June the same year😉😉
Apple doesn’t sell their A series or M1 chip they won’t sell their modem. It will be built into Apple chip itself, not separately.
I think this is quite important, as well.
I have an iP12PM, and I do not even know what its maximum theoretical data transfer speed is. What I know is that the practical 5G speed at the moment (indoors) is around 100 Mbit/s (downlink), and the speed is limited (a) by the network capacity and (b) by my contract (300 Mbit/s, IIRC). I do not really care if the maximum rate is 300, 600, 900 or 1200 Mbit/s, as I do not have any use for that, and it would only happen outdoors close to a base station (or indoors in the same space as the base station). The law of diminishing return applies.
By designing a modem Apple can choose what is good enough, and which features are really needed. I wouldn't expect Apple's modem to be the absolutely best (whatever that means) in the market, but it will be the best-suited for Apple's use case.
oops lol, still my logic stand, apple had more than a decade perfecting their a series so their current m1 chip can come out of the gate running.
edit, looks like we both got our info wrong 😂
A game changer would be if Apple does what OneMedia recently did. A 5G modem with a 4K Broadcast TV chip within it, yes LIVE TV on your smart phone with no data usage needed. Samsung has the tech too, but it already exists and is being tested in America in Hunt Valley, Maryland as we speak under an experimental short term FCC permit. But Apple would never be so bold to beat Samsung to market with anything even though I'll bet Samsung will make those phones in South Korea for sure. The carriers will not like this phone. This particular phone is not commercially available, only for testing purposes, but a commercial version will happen soon by someone and hopefully with a better appearance. Apple?
This is an interesting thought.
If that happens, Apple needs at least three different kinds of modems:
- "iPhone modem": full features, fast
- "Watch modem": limited transfer rate, low power consumption
- "airtag modem": very limited transfer rate, NB-IoT/LTE-M only, ultra low power consumption
(I am slightly sceptical about the viability of an airtag modem, as even NB-IoT is a power hog. It is very difficult to combine hundreds of milliwatts with a single button cell. But as there are no hard limits of physics saying it cannot be done, let's keep it on the list of possible things in the future.)
Nokia was heavily involved with digital TV protocols (DVB-H) in the first decade of this millennium.
It was a promising idea, but improvements in mobile networks made it obsolete before it really started. It is much more convenient to watch the programs through the Internet when you want to watch them. Broadcast TV in the traditional sense is dying.
Uncapped data plans or plans with very high caps are more and more common, so the issue of data usage is disappearing.
Does this mean that you use your Mac when not carrying your iPhone? I'm struggling to see the use case that would justify paying the extra cost for a modem inside a Mac...
In my experience the transmission equipment your network uses would dictate whether you’ll have a good experience with the Intel modem or not.
The network provider I use o2 uses Ericsson transmitters which I found out when an elapsed security certificate caused all the Ericsson based networks around the world to fail and o2 was one of them.
On o2 Intel based iPhones have suffered with poor/erratic performance, usually a case of the phone indicating you having 4G(LTE) service but then having completely frozen or very slow data rates until airplane mode is toggled. I had this on an X/XR/11 whereas my Qualcomm based 12 has been far more consistent only having this issue twice in 2 weeks rather than multiple times a day, and it is able to hold on to a signal for longer and get much faster data speeds too.
That being said I stuck my works EE SIM card in my XR when iOS 13 was released to test it as at the time there was a bug in iOS13 that caused issues with the XR on the O2 network which wasn’t fixed for months. On the EE network not only was the XR more reliable it was blazing fast too, at one time I accidentally obliterated my monthly data allowance in one speed test as it pulled down 350Mb on LTE, by contrast I’ve still not seen this again on O2 with 5G. EE I believe used Huawei equipment prior to the ban.
So as an O2 customer my experience with Intel modems has been poor, and I am a little worried about Apple developing their own modems based off the Intel acquisition, but I hold out hope they can make them as good as their Arm processors which are class leading. If they can make them as reliable as the Qualcomm one in my 12 I’d call that a win.
The network provider I use o2 uses Ericsson transmitters which I found out when an elapsed security certificate caused all the Ericsson based networks around the world to fail and o2 was one of them.
On o2 Intel based iPhones have suffered with poor/erratic performance, usually a case of the phone indicating you having 4G(LTE) service but then having completely frozen or very slow data rates until airplane mode is toggled. I had this on an X/XR/11 whereas my Qualcomm based 12 has been far more consistent only having this issue twice in 2 weeks rather than multiple times a day, and it is able to hold on to a signal for longer and get much faster data speeds too.
That being said I stuck my works EE SIM card in my XR when iOS 13 was released to test it as at the time there was a bug in iOS13 that caused issues with the XR on the O2 network which wasn’t fixed for months. On the EE network not only was the XR more reliable it was blazing fast too, at one time I accidentally obliterated my monthly data allowance in one speed test as it pulled down 350Mb on LTE, by contrast I’ve still not seen this again on O2 with 5G. EE I believe used Huawei equipment prior to the ban.
So as an O2 customer my experience with Intel modems has been poor, and I am a little worried about Apple developing their own modems based off the Intel acquisition, but I hold out hope they can make them as good as their Arm processors which are class leading. If they can make them as reliable as the Qualcomm one in my 12 I’d call that a win.
I’m not wrong. I just didn’t think of iPad, which they introduced early that year. 😉
You on the other hand are completely wrong. 😀
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Hypothetical dream scenario: The year is 2025, there are now 3 generations of iPhone containing this purported Apple-designed modem chip, including iPads and the latest Mac/iMacs. Apple announces partnership with SpaceX’s Starlink which has just recently been completed in space and which Apple has secretly designed to be optimised for in it’s in-house modem chip.
Overnight, every recent Apple product can now access high-bandwidth data directly from Starlink’s Satellite network at any point of the planet, with a data package that can be purchased directly through iCloud settings, or available with an Apple One bundle.
The world’s population is now freed from the limitations of land based communications towers and from increasingly pervasive local ISP’s & Governments. The internet for the most part exists as an ethereal network accessible to all humans equally and largely without interference from any entities that would restrict that access, lest they control the devices themselves. A man can dream…
Overnight, every recent Apple product can now access high-bandwidth data directly from Starlink’s Satellite network at any point of the planet, with a data package that can be purchased directly through iCloud settings, or available with an Apple One bundle.
The world’s population is now freed from the limitations of land based communications towers and from increasingly pervasive local ISP’s & Governments. The internet for the most part exists as an ethereal network accessible to all humans equally and largely without interference from any entities that would restrict that access, lest they control the devices themselves. A man can dream…
I wouldn't be surprised if this is a conservative estimate leaked by Apple that they plan to exceed by at least one year. They've done this before when it comes to bringing component design/production in-house and makes sense for two reasons: 1) throw their competitors off 2) make investors happy.
A CPU here, a modem there. OK. Not that components aren't important, but where Apple used to shine was having full control over well rounded user experiences, hardware and software, which were so good you didn't think about the specs. Now it feels like it's all about iterative component updates and stats humblebragging on otherwise unchanging devices and paradigms running OS's that can't keep up (case in point: iPad OS).
What I read: “Apple-designed modem to debut”
What I pictured:
What I pictured:
When SpaceX launched Starlink, I immidiately thought of Steve Jobs and his vision of Apple's own, globally accessible wireless network. A partnership with SpaceX couldn't be closer to it.
OT: reminder how beautiful Apple designs were during that era. Makes me want to cry. Not saying today's stuff looks bad, mind you. But that font, that apple, that shade of grey, those lines...just makes me weep.
You can dream, but the laws of physics are unpleasantly difficult to ignore.
Starlink requires clear line-of-sight between the antenna and the satellite. The antenna is a relatively large phased array antenna (active aperture ~0.5 m) and narrow beam (~3°). Anything smaller or with wider beam, and the link budget is gone. The link budget is largely limited by laws of physics (distance, beam width, atmospheric absorption) and there is not much extra tolerance (it is not needed in this application, and any added tolerance would require a larger antenna).
No, mobile phones are not going to communicate with Starlink satellites. Yes, satellite phones do exist, but the data transfer rate is on kbit/s range. The most important metric in measuring the efficiency of any radio system is energy per bit transferred (J/bit). For example, an Iridium satellite phone uses approximately 0.25 mJ/bit (0.6 W for 2400 bit/s). For a 100 Mbit/s connection the transmission power would be 25 kW...
Other companies were also making
- Smartphones
- Music players
- Mobile Phone CPUs
- Computer CPUs
- Touch Screen Tablets
- Consumer digital cameras
- Bluetooth headphones
DrV' Too verbose/difficult for most, a simple "dream on" Or "Laws of physics" reply would have sufficed.
I though liked your post, interesting stuff.