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Apple’s long-rumored wireless modem work appears to be finally coming to a head. A new report Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman suggested earlier this month that next spring iPhone SE refresh rumors will bring the first wireless modem designed by Apple, a significant shift from the company’s recent reliance on chips from Qualcomm, the current leader in the mobile modem industry.
According to Gurman, Apple will gradually scale up with its modern ambitions. Next year, the hardware will appear in the more affordable iPhone SE, iPhone 17 “Slim” and some entry-level cellular-connected iPads.
He says that the first generation modem is not as “advanced” as the modem Qualcomm chips in today’s flagship iPhone 16 line and it is unable to handle the higher-frequency 5G spectrum such as millimeter wave, which Verizon and AT&T have deployed in parts of major cities, airports and stadiums for super-fast connections.
The modem is also said to be limited to four-channel carrier aggregation, a departure from Qualcomm’s latest chips. Carrier aggregation allows multiple bands of wireless spectrum to be combined to increase data rates. While Apple’s entry-level modems may not be as fast as Qualcomm’s latest, Gurman says it “limits download speeds to around 4 gigabits per second” in lab tests.
While the real world is very different from controlled lab experiments, if Apple can consistently deliver even a fraction of that bandwidth, it should be fine for most people’s day-to-day streaming, messaging, video calling, and social media sharing.
Although Apple’s modems are said to arrive in 2026 and 2027 and could outperform future Qualcomm chips, a lot is reliant on Apple getting its modem out of the box. You only have to look back to 2010 iPhone 4 “antennagate” to see how bad messing with a relationship can go.
A cautionary tale
Steve Jobs called the situation “Antennagate,” but said the loss of signal from holding the iPhone 4 was “not unique” compared to other smartphones.
The iPhone 4 was Apple’s first major iPhone redesign and featured an all-new antenna design with cutouts along the sides of the phone that allowed the company to turn stainless steel strips into antenna parts for Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and, of course, cellular connection.
The problem, as users quickly discovered, is that holding the phone in your hand without a case can easily interfere with the signal. This led to a press conferencea public lettersoftware updates to fix how cell signal strength is displayed, lawsuits, free cases and at the end of the settlement.
Despite that leaking when mistakenly left at the bar months before its release, Apple’s famous secrecy may have played a role in limiting public testing of the iPhone 4. Leaks have shown that Apple has been testing its phone in cases designed to mimic the look of the iPhone 3G or 3GS. After all, using the case helped solve the “antennagate” problem, which mostly occurred when users used their phones without it.
A A 2010 Bloomberg reporthowever, it suggests that at least one Apple engineer raised concerns with management about the design.
Saga was a a black eye for Apple although it obviously slowed down the iPhone’s meteoric rise a bit. Until the moment iPhone 4S All around, antenna issues have been resolved and today’s iPhones still have cutouts along both sides of the phone and work without any cellular issues (small antenna cutouts along the sides of the device have also become common on Android phones from Samsung, Google and others).
Gurman says that “Apple has been secretly testing the new modem on hundreds of devices distributed to employees around the world” and “has been doing quality testing with its partners around the world,” which is good news for the new modem.
“There’s always a risk with the introduction of new silicon, especially one that controls so much of the experience, so I always thought they’d introduce the first generation on a cheaper, less risky device like the iPhone SE or iPad Mini,” Anchel Sugg, principal analyst at Moor Insights and Strategies, he says.
He notes that with this approach, Apple can “get the modems out into the real world and squash any bugs that exist without risking the profitability of the core iPhone business.”
Avi Greengart, president and chief analyst at Techsponential, seems to agree.
“Apple (and Intel before it) have been working on this for a long time, but Qualcomm and MediaTek today have significant advantages in terms of 5G modem performance, and that gap is likely to grow,” he says.
“However, Apple’s modems may be ‘good enough’ for its non-flagship phones, iPads and hopefully MacBooks.” Apple will likely want to stick with Qualcomm’s modems longer for its premium products, especially on the phone side, where reception in fringe areas and urban canyons is critical to the user experience.”
Hopefully, this means that when the new modem and new devices come out, users won’t have to relive Apple’s past failures.
