iPhone 15 Pro with X70 modem offers up to 24% faster 5G speeds | Hacker News Reader

iPhone 15 Pro with X70 modem offers up to 24% faster 5G speeds

speedsmart.net

31 pointsmfiguiere41 comments

Here in Canada my iPhone 12 is reporting that in many places I am on a 5G+ network and on that network I get above 300MBps.

So I am confused by this article that says the new iPhone 15 can finally now achieve those speeds. My phone can do that and it is 3 years old.

They're looking at average speeds seen in the dataset of the users of their speed-test app. So the idea is instead of looking at peak speeds in good conditions, looking at actual speeds in real-life conditions, to see how well the modem deals with cell selection, poor reception, congested networks, etc.

That said, the phone isn't out yet? Where is this data coming from? If it's all staff at Apple Campus that's not going to be a realistic comparison.

Here in India my iPhone 13 has delivered me gigabit speeds. And it's not just me my friends also get those speeds at times (early morning usually when networks aren't busy). So the iPhone supports well over gigabit speeds on 5G already. That being said during day time I have seen speeds below 10mbps on 5G so it is very traffic dependent and has nothing to do with the pro being more capable so its faster.

Edit: Apparently if you are farther the Pro is better. Could be interesting but if the tower is bogged down with traffic it won't help anyway in my case.

Here in Taipei I get pretty close to gigabit download speeds in good conditions. Upload only around 150Mbit though.

>My phone can do that and it is 3 years old

Soon it won't, because of the impending SAR issue patch

Apple clarified that it failed tests because ‘related to a specific testing protocol used by French regulators and not a safety concern’ not because they are using more power to get faster speeds.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/more-countries-are-c...

What happened to upload speeds? I remember ~10 years ago, LTE speeds on my carrier (T-Mobile) were in excess of 75Mb/s. Now we're down to about 1/3 of that.

Is there some channels tradeoff in 5G, like DOCIS, where there are a finite number of channels that can be either upload or download, and carriers give more channels to download? Or is it just carriers being carriers and sucking on metrics that are not widely advertised?

What happened to Apple’s efforts to design their own modem? Are those still ongoing?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/09/apple...

What’s unclear is if that deal is for new phone models or old.

Keep in mind Apple has a strategy where they graduate down new phones and sell previous year models for 3-4 years after it was first introduced.

This could just be Apple needing Qualcomm licensing/chips for iPhone 14 models since they will continue selling that model for a few more years.

That’s a really interesting point - thank you!

Modems and other comms devices are patent minefields.

Even if they have something reasonable ready to go, it'll take them years to actually ship it in a product.

The usual step in the middle is to acquire/acquihire a company with a decent patent portfolio.

Yes, but their first Modem will likely come to SE or other product range before going to flagship. Although I wont be surprised if it ends up being like Apple Car Project.

If I was in charge of Apple Car I would have just bought a model of VW or something, stripped the interior and put in an Apple finish. VW already does that a ton so it’s very easy to do.

Then they could focus on their specialty, the experience. It should be the most enjoyable car you’ve ever used. You don’t need bullshit like self-driving, just fix all the rough areas other manufacturers have.

Cars aren’t that hard to make. Just look at Chinese EV brands growing like weed. But unless Apple had something entirely different to offer - hard to imagine it would be anything other than full autonomous driving - why bother going into a market where margins are thin and moats are nil?

As much as I used to want an Apple Car or Apple TV (Set), Cars and TV are similar in that they are a low margin product and they dont share any of their current operation and supply chain.

And if low margin wasn't an issue the first thing I wish them to bring back would be AirPort Extreme.

Does it even matter for most of us?

Yes but in a subtle manner. While hundreds of Mbps is well past the point of finishing returns for one individual, that pool of bandwidth is shared between all customers in a sector. Rising peak speeds helps reduce the likelihood of congestion. To use a strained analogy rising car fuel economy keeps national gasoline demand flat even with more people driving than ever before.

Or Network capacity. But I am glad at least 5% of HN ( I mean look at the rest of comment on this post ) is finally catching up to understanding what 5G is all about.

this: 1Gbps for 1 user == 1Mbps for ~1000 users

funny how adding the most basic thing—a 23 yo USB C ('cuz it has USB 2 speeds on the non-Pro iPhone)—is mentioned as a feature you should upgrade your iPhone for...

The USB C connector is not 23 years old. IIRC Apple was a big participant in the USB C design process, advocating for a symmetric connector (like Lightning), unifying USB C and Thunderbolt, etc.

For that matter, Apple was a major adopter of USB starting with the iMac in 1998 (which also ditched 3.5" floppy disks in favor of optical and USB storage options - later models added FireWire.) Non-USB connections for iDevices (FireWire, 30-pin, Lightning) were used because of limitations of USB at the time(s). 30-pin and Lightning were retained for ~10 years to reduce connector churn (sorry Firewire iPod people.)

Regarding the pro model, it's definitely convenient to be able to shoot directly to an external SSD, connect to a monitor (and charge from it like a MacBook or iPad) etc. without a dongle.

>For that matter, Apple was a major adopter of USB

And they've pioniered USB-C usage in charging with otherwise ill-conceived 2015 MBP.

Oh now it's convenient to connect it to external storage? What happened to "who cares about how shit itunes is on windows just buy a mac or use itunes", or "who cares about sd cards or external storage just use the cloud" etc.?

Both are true. 99.999% of users won’t connect external storage or a monitor. Personally I feel like I get nothing with the shift from lightening to USB C other than having to toss dozens of perfectly good cables and buy new ones that will achieve the exact same thing.

> "No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame." -- Slashdot creator CmdrTaco/Rob Malda about the iPod in 2001.

I can’t remember the last time I connected my iPhone to a computer to do a data transfer.

In fairness, this was a relatively lackluster update to the iPhone. There is little difference between the iPhones 11 to 15 for normal consumers. It suggests upgrade cycles can lengthen as a result.

If you buy the iPhone 11 right now, you will get 1 version update and that's it. You will still get security updates I guess.

Where has it been stated that iPhone 11 will only get one more (presumably iOS 17?) update?

Nowhere. The release of iOS 17 will support iPhone XR/XS, which is one generation older than iPhone 11. GP probably means iPhone 11 will get iOS 18 next year and no more OS upgrades after that (based on the fact that iPhone X is not getting iOS 17, iPhone XS may not get iOS 18, and so on).

While Apple does not guarantee or publish a guarantee about how many years of major OS versions and security updates iPhones will get, it’s typically been about six or seven years of major OS version upgrades (from original device release) and another two or more years of security updates. The iPhone 11 was released in 2019 with iOS 13. When it’ll stop getting a new iOS version is up to Apple.

> There is little difference between the iPhones 11 to 15 for normal consumers.

Nope. The improvements in camera and what it offers are noticeable, especially for low light photography as well as video quality and types. Some examples: night mode, portrait mode, cinematic mode, etc. Normal customers do care for or are impressed such things. The difference from one year’s phone to the next year’s may or may not be significant, but if you’re looking from iPhone 11 to iPhone 15, there is a really huge difference.

Seeing as how latency did not decrease from the previous generation, is it fair to say that existing latency is inherently tied to 5G (and other) wireless protocol(s)?

> […] latency is inherently tied to 5G (and other) wireless protocol(s)?

It is tied to 5G but not to the wireless network. It is tied to the 5G core (wired) network design where the device's IP traffic terminates at each cell site that has its own IP connection to a uplink ISP. Therefore, each cell site is also an exit node for the IP traffic.

5G has incorporated this design feature for two major reasons: 1) reduced latency, 2) mobile edge computing where compute nodes could placed at the cell site location to offload computations to (think Cloudflare worker style nodes that a mobile device can send off a compute unit to and get results quickly. Practically, I do not think anyone has implemented the mobile edge computing other than placing game servers next the cell).

In 3G and 4G, on the hand, IP packets had to travel across the entire core network of a mobile operator and exit the core network at a single point which resulter in a higher latency.

I think the edge compute on the 5G towers is mostly an industry application in dedicated private networks rather than public networks for end users.

For example, a factory might use 5G as their wireless networking stack (instead of Wi-Fi) to collect sensor data from machines, robots, process nodes, moving inventory, etc and place the compute at the tower to filter what data to forward to the cloud, or to implement some control logic.

Look for standalone 5G (SA) if you want lower latency. Most 5G is actually bonding 5G channel(s) to a main 4G control channel(s) so it has 4G latency.

Wasn't lower latency one of the big selling points of 5G...?

do they still lie about signal strength?

No, you're just holding it wrong.

Weird. I get 700Mbps+ in Canada on iPhone 14 Pro.

Those are average speeds across the country, not best/peak speeds. My guess is that the modem supports more efficient encoding and/or has better signal to noise ratio so given the same radio conditions they can get more bandwidth. Either that, or there's sampling bias where the new phone is more likely to be owned by urban customers, which have better speeds compared to rural customers and thus skewing the average.

The phone isn't even out yet, so the only users must be Apple staff. Maybe by now priority reviewers like MKBHD have them?

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