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Comment by timerol | Hacker News Reader

> iPhone Air features N1, a new Apple-designed wireless networking chip that enables Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread.

Congrats to Apple for finally designing out Broadcom and vertically integrating the wireless chip

Wireless chipsets have just always been notoriously unreliable. It will be interesting to see Apple can improve reliability here.

Very interesting that it has Thread too. I wonder if that will be a somewhat viable system in a decade. (Show me where I can buy a cheap Thread border gateway that isn't an Apple or Google voice assistant or whatever.)

We're now on the third generation of iPhones that include Thread radios. Mines been sitting dormant for two years waiting for software that utilizes it.

The Aqara Hub M100 is a nice cheap Thread border router.

I’ve read two articles on thread and still don’t know what it is. Something to do with smart homes?

its a low level protocol like WiFi on top of which Smart Home protocols, like Matter, run. It allows for IoT devices to be managed, registered and configured completely local with a hub (any iPad, HomePod and so on) and requires no servers. It is private by design and more secure in some ways, as no one but your hub can control the device. Currently a lot of IoT devices rely on a server that registers and controls them, and is in the hands of a random company you need to trust.

TLDR: privacy, security.

I’ve been impressed with my Thread setup. It’s fast and reliable. Don’t have to think about it, just works.

I mostly use Eve devices. My AppleTV serves as the hub and I keep it plugged into Ethernet. HomePods scattered about keep the mesh strong.

What does it mean though, practically? What could I do with a thread-enabled iPhone?

I wonder if they will eventually add NFC to it. It probably needs to be certified since NFC is used for payments.

NFC is handled by an NXP chip which is completely different than the Broadcom (wifi, BLE) chip. its a simple, extremely well engineered chip that costs nickels and is passively powered so it doesn't affect battery life at all. No incentives whatsoever to build it in-house. Broadcom and Qualcomm were a whole different story.

doubling down on matter! Adoption has been slow but it is starting to ramp up quicker

I wonder why they don't put it to 17/Pro.

my guess is ramping up production and for testing in real world. they did the same thing with C1 modem and released it only for iphone 16e.

They did

N1 is just in 17 Air, no?

edit: ahh I confused it with C1X that is just in Air

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