So far, it's not looking good for Qualcomm.
Apple C1 modem performs as well or better than Qualcomm modem, other than mmWave (C1 doesn't have it, but "in real-world use, you're more likely to rely on mid-band 5G" - and next Apple modems likely to have mmWave anyway).
https://www.phonearena.com/news/the-iphone-16e-just-outperformed-the-iphone-16-with-a-surprising-5g-advantage-wait-what_id168046
"I'm excited to see what the roadmap is. mmWave?"
The modem roadmap might be interesting, but not exciting. mmWave? Faster modem speed? AI? So what. Most consumers care more about other things at this point (camera, MagSafe, price, etc). I'm saying this as an engineer - it's even more true for non engineers.
C1 is just a glimpse
Yes, they gave us a glimpse of a modem that performs poorly. It uses less power, but you lose your connection. I'm excited to see what the roadmap is. mmWave?
First people were saying the modem was going smoke Qualcomm, but now people are saying it's good enough for customers. If that's the mentality, do we expect Apple to create something to excite us? Especially for a chip that's supposed to be an afterthought?
What secret?
You know nothing or you are losing your job for spilling out the secret.
Interesting how there are so many "experts" on this thread who know exactly what Apple can or cannot do, and how exactly C1 works.
I worked both in Q modem team and Apple modem team. Just a word of wisdom to my former colleagues, if I were in Q modem team right now, I would be scared to de*th knowing what I know. C1 is just a glimpse
Good luck!
This thread is just geeks arguing with geeks.
The average consumer has no idea what "modem" or "Mbps/Gbps" even means, and doesn't care. They base their decisions purely on user experience (camera, battery life, apps, communicating with their loved ones, etc). To them, this thread is just a lot of useless buzzing noises.
Having the absolute best modem is not important (certainly not to me). The only thing that matters is does the phone do what you want? Since my old 4G phone is already doing what I want, I have no worries (yet) about the Apple C1 modem. In fact, I expected it to significantly outperform what I already have (and am happy with).
Apple doesn’t have to be the best modem yet; they just want to be good enough for now not to depend on Q
Apple will not be able to make a modem that will outperform Qualcomm's modem. To understand why, ask yourself why the Android UI is so clunky compared to iOS even though Google, Samsung, and others have spent a dozen plus years and billions of dollars trying to improve it. These companies just don't have the same mindset as Apple.
In the same way, Apple still has not been able to create a modem comparable to Qualcomm's despite spending nearly 10 years and billions of dollars. Do people expect Apple will finally get their act together? If you're late in your career and are still a mid-level ranking employee, do you suddenly expect to become a star? Maybe a modem, which is all firmware, is too complex for them.
It doesn't matter if C1 or any other modem will perform worse than Qualcomm's. Apple just wants the cheapest part in their phones. I'd do the same thing as Apple.
@16n+1jn9xfvfs lol this is so entertaining, unless you work at Qualcomm then it’s scary AF. Good luck
Apple modem good. Performance great. Power low.
Q-fear, Q-anger real
Q-lose
"There are no alternatives" - clearly the companies buying the modems disagree - and they are the only ones that matter.
There are no alternatives, Q modems are the best out there. There will be no Exynos in the S25 series. Apple, which is a FAANG company with the ability to attract the best employees in the world, spent billions and more than 9 years to make a modem, the result is pathetic. There is a big difference between a modem and a good modem. It's like nuclear bombs, the theory is available to everyone, but very few countries can make it.
"Samsung already has a modem"
I was wondering why Samsung is using Qualcomm modem if it has its own modem. Turns out the answer might simply be cost, not quality. Samsung uses Qualcomm modem in U.S. to avoid paying patent fees to Qualcomm, but in other parts of the world it uses its own Exynos modem. https://x.com/AbhishekMarkets/status/1762133951165198680?lang=en
Related: Google Pixel has Samsung Exynos modem, but for Pixel 10 it plans to replace that with a MediaTek modem (not Q modem). https://www.androidpolice.com/pixel-10-skip-samsung-qualcomm-modem-for-mediatek/
Many companies are finding compelling reasons to not use Qualcomm modem. There are too many good alternatives.
Samsung may eventually go their own way as well
Samsung already has a modem for a long time.
If it's only able to do 10 Mbps, then it's probably also using more power.
Poor performing modem is likely due to Apple's walled garden mindset. Their devices work well in their ecosystem. A modem, on the other hand, is a jungle because there's so many external entities to deal with.
The comparison was with the X71...which is the old generation as the new one is X85
It's not about whether 10Meg is enough or not, it's about people willingness to pay a premium price for a low tiers technology.
iPhones are already very expensive for the value you get, same stuff since 2007.
C1 modem is probably already good enough. C2 will be even better, then C3 ... I don't see Apple coming back to Qualcomm, and Samsung may eventually go their own way as well. Modem market is very mature.
"10Mbps for Apple C1 in grocery store". That was a good article. Here's the link for previous post just mentioned: https://www.macworld.com/article/2626940/apple-c1-modem-real-world-tests-iphone-16e-download-upload-speeds-performance.html
BUT - here's what you actually need
5Mbps: email, social media, web browsing
5-20Mbps: HD video streaming
20-40Mbps: 4k video streaming, online games
40-100Mbps: HD games
100+ Mbps: multiplayer games
https://www.speedtest.net/about/knowledge/how-much-speed-you-need
Worst case of 10Mbps for C1 modem (in grocery store) is still fine - who is going to do HD video streaming while shopping? You are going to text or call your wife about what to get, not walk around the store like a zombie staring at a streaming HD video.
Folks again getting seduced by numbers, without thinking about what is actually needed.
Apple modem performance tests are already out, and the performance su-ks!
You can just search the reviews, you will find it.
"In the supermarket where it’s hard to get a really good connection, the C1 bombed hard, downloading at only about 10 megabits/s while the Qualcomm modem managed over 200. Remember, this is the average of three successive tests, to reduce the natural variability of cellular performance."
@vh+1jn9xfvfs if you are not careful, that bear is gonna bite you in the *ss
All you guys are missing the point. The wonder is not that the bear dances well . The wonder is that the bear dances at all !
What are the chances Apple intentionally lowered the modem performance of the 16 to make their C1 look better? I wouldn't put it past them. Let's see the comparisons to similarly priced Android products.
@ja+1jn9xfvfs: Aaaah...someone knowledgeable on the mmw propagation characteristics (finally!). It was CRD and ESG who hyped the FR2 band as if it was a panacea to everything. But without carrier support, which needs huge investment, nothing moves. Also, there are still millions of 4g devices that need upgraded to 5g. In a different world, the carriers would subsidize phones which would motivate people to turn in their 4g and transition would be quicker.
@jc+1jn9xfvfs. You message will be much more effective if you use facts instead of rudeness. Pardon me for making an assumption, but you sound like a rather young person reacting out of simple emotion.
Guys Apple is not good at making system level software. They had to ripoff BSD to make OSX. They don't even use macOS for their own servers. A modem is a DSP running a firmware and a RTOS. It's no wonder they had to buy Intel and it still took 7-8 years to make an inferior product.
It’s always the loudest one in room that is d-mbest one. Maybe pick some competence over confidence. This is why they are offshoring your jobs. 5G is just not about the speed. Q needs to fire you all your incompetent a$$e$ and hire people who know what they are talking about
mmWave is a bit of a marketing scam. It's really only good for local hot spots, since those wavelengths are blocked by almost anything. Even people, trees and rain can seriously degrade the signal.
The need for speed is also marketing hype. My phone is an old 4G, and I have no complaints at all about speed. I have wifi at home, and when outside I have no desire or need to use the phone for anything other than making calls or texting, or occasionally looking up some info on the internet. I'm about to upgrade (probably to iPhone 16e), but that's only because I'm worried that my phone might break down due to age.
Some folks are seduced by spec numbers and don't question whether it actually matters.
Guys these are all expected for the first gen modem. The truth is that Apple no longer needs Qualcomm and there is a lot of curry in the break room !
The video also says the iPhone uses more power than its Android counterpart when there is a low signal/high interference. 16e only uses less power than 16 because it does less work to mitigate the bad quality. Your connection will break and drop, but you'll use less power.
The person who wrote that article is a literature major. So she's basically an HR lady telling what to think technically.
@fb+1jn9xfvfs: Regarding "Apple cuts functionality...their users know no better"...This has been the Q schtick since quite some time. Q piles on features upon features and it adds to the cost...$2 for mms module and $0.10 for making the mms module change beams because blah blah. My iPhone14Pro has not even "smelled" a mmw signal in all it "life" of 2.5 years AND I travel extensively. Heck, at my place in Scripps R all I get is LTE, about 70 Mbps down and 11M up on speed test. At work in Sorrento area, I get about double in 5G. Why did I need to pay BOM and royalties for mmw? If Apple had not been forced to pay for the unused parts, if nothing else, my AAPL value would have been higher.
BTW, I see no issue even if I am getting only 70Mbps. At home and work, my iPhone is on WiFi and streaming Spotify while driving is not a problem. Q marketing sells this garbage that everyone needs 1Gbps connections. They try to pull wool over people's eyes saying that the need for data is growing exponentially and by xxxx year, we will need 2Gbps to survive. But the reality is that even though there is more streaming and more activity on mobile platforms now, the data compression techniques and optimizations are helping to reduce the need for data consumption to grow exponentially. Heck, it is not even growing linearly. My 70down/11up Mpbs is good enough for ANY of my needs. And no, no one has given me the latency I may need if I am a gamer. The modem may have ultra low latency (which I am not sure, pls edify me), but the carriers are still not passing it on to the consumer. If it were not for the camera, I could have done with a iPhoneSE.
That website only mentioned the part of the subway because that's probably the only part the author understands.
If you watch the video, the guy says when the signal strength is low or the interference is high, the performance, in terms of iperf download speed, drops.
In some bands it performs much worse than the iPhone 16.
Both 16 and 16e perform much worse than Android phones in the subway test, even the ones with Mediatek.
The power efficiency comes at the cost of cutting functionality. Apple cuts functionality to cut costs because they know their users won't know any better.
16 years? More like 30-40 years, maybe even 50-60, or closer to 70 years
took over 16 years to build it. $ well spent.... NOT
@ch+1jn9xfvfs we (and our management) keep moving the goal post on this.
First, Apple can't build a modem. They did.
Then, in the long shot chance Apple built a modem, it will be much worse than Q modem. It is not. In fact, it appears to be better for power, while being on par with performance.
Now, you are saying "if it's that good, let's see it in iPhone 17". Guess what, chances are we will.
You sound like one of our management in denial. Let's recognize the reality for what it is! Qualcomm modem leadership is no more
Q does only cost reduction. No innovation at all. Q already lost a leadership in modem road map.
If it's that good then they should also put it in the iPhone 17.
This is the equivalent on Qualcomm comparing the performance of its Snapdragon chips to last years Apple Silicon chips.
Wait, you mean Apple actually built a modem and it outperforms Qualcomm modem, and has 25% lower power ?
That sounds impossible therefore it must not be true. Apple cannot build a modem. Right?! RIGHT???!!
Qualcomm logic: Apple can’t build a modem, if they build a modem it will be worse than Qualcomm modem, if it is better than Qualcomm modem then it must be Qualcomm modem because some engineers at some point worked at Qualcomm.
Arrogant denialism at its best 🤣
C2 is around the corner. Run for the door while you can