When Apple finally reached an agreement in its homeric fight with Qualcomm in mid-April, we said that most likely this year’s iPhones project was already closed and that we would still see 4G (LTE) modems from Intel on them. No sooner said than done.
THE PCMag.com confirmed through its own analyzes that iPhones 11, 11 Pro and 11 Pro Max in fact they are still equipped with modems provided by Intel – which, by the way, are now kind of “from Apple itself” (hehe).
It was even possible to reach this conclusion, seeing that the 4G band / frequency “zone” in this year’s models remains more or less the same as last year. We know that Qualcomm has modems that support a wider range of them, so just waiting for 2020 to see if this scenario will improve for us.
On the other hand, still talking about 2020, it is very likely that Apple will again adopt Qualcomm modems precisely to make the inclusion of the 5G technology on next year’s iPhones. So, it may even be that the coverage of bands / frequencies of 4G improves, but all this novelty of compatibility here and there must start from scratch, again, thinking about 5G.
Apple does not reveal these details on the technical specification pages for iPhones, but Apple PCMag.com believes that the Intel modem used in this year’s devices is the XMM 7660. It is a state-of-the-art modem, with Gigabit LTE support and up to 20% more performance than last year – initial practical tests have already shown gains in around 13%.
Finally, it is worth noting that the iPhone 11 maintains a 2 × 2 MIMO antenna just like its predecessor (XR), while the Pro models (successors to the XS and XS Max) have a 4 × 4 MIMO – that is, they theoretically reach higher speeds in data transfer.
via iMore | image: JHVEPhoto / Shutterstock.com
