Apple just introduced its first proprietary cell modem, C1, as part Ookla, the company standing behind SpeedTest, has just controlled the modem C1 And it was surprisingly good, even compared to Qualcomm chips, which accompany the more expensive iPhone 16 phones.
C1 misses the support of the MMWAVE 5G, but it can still stay in the speed department. The company found that the iPhone 16E offers an average load speed of 560 Mbps for the best 90th percentiles of users on AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile. The standard iPhone 16 using the Qualcomm chip in this scenario is faster with an average load speed of 756 Mbit / s. The difference, however, is not sharp.
Things change when you move from the upper 90s of the percentile to the lower 10th percentile. In this case, the iPhone 16e actually exceeds the standard model. The average data speed for 16e reached almost 218 Mbps, while the Qualcomm model was an average of 210 Mbit / s. Interestingly, the latest iPhone model was the fastest when using the AT&T and Verizon network. It was slower on T-Mobile.
As for the boot speed, 16e surpassed the traditional iPhone 16 in almost every test. Apple As “the most energy-efficient modem on the iPhone,” and it does not seem hyperbole.
Ookla tests correspond to our experience, as described in detail in The field we found that the C1 modem even surpassed the iPhone 16 Pro in certain versions of use. Nevertheless, it is always worth noting that this chip does not support UltrawideBand 5G.
Thus, Apple investments to create an internal modem seemed worthy of efforts, like these fast M-series chips. According to reports, the company has big plans for future iterations. Most likely, C2 is not only on the way, but Apple plans to create a universal processor The field can allow this to get serious benefits of energy and costs.