Speed Test Shocker: Apple’s C1 Modem Can’t Keep Up With Qualcomm

With the launch of the iPhone 16e, Apple introduced its first-ever in-house C1 modem, which appears to challenge Qualcomm. It’s interesting that Apple chose a “budget” iPhone to debut the C1 modem, but maybe now we know why—it isn’t that good.

How does the Apple C1 modem fare against Qualcomm?

A recent study by Cellular Insights found that the Apple C1 modem in the iPhone 16e doesn’t perform as well as Qualcomm modems. The test pitted the C1’s performance against two Android phones that feature Qualcomm’s flagship modems in New York City with the help of T-Mobile’s sub-6GHz 5G network.

One of the Android phones used the Snapdragon X75 modem, while the other used the Snapdragon X80 modem.

Based on the study’s results, Qualcomm’s modems outperformed the C1 modem with faster download speeds of around 34-35%. Regarding upload speeds, Qualcomm’s modems blew Apple out of the water, with speeds 81-91% faster. The differences are enormous, but there’s a caveat we thought we should point out.

Qualcomm commissioned the Cellular Insight study, which means that it isn’t entirely objective and should be taken with a grain of salt. However, the difference of 81-91% in upload speeds is simply too significant to be within the margin of error. Although the study isn’t 100% impartial, the differences are too glaring to ignore.

To be fair to Apple…

In all fairness, the C1 is Apple’s first attempt at creating a mobile modem for its smartphones. Rarely does anyone get it right the first try. However, if Apple did get one thing right, it would be in terms of power efficiency. According to Apple, the C1 is more power efficient compared to the other iPhone 16 models, the rest of which are running Qualcomm-made modems.

In fact, there were benchmarks from a couple of months ago that revealed that the C1 modem by Apple isn’t too far off from Qualcomm modems in terms of performance.

We expect Apple to improve its modem efforts in the future. A recent report already claims that Apple is working on an upgraded version of the C1, which will come with mmWave 5G support. It will probably be a few more years before Apple fully transitions away from Qualcomm modems, so hopefully, they’ll get it right by then.