Apple’s risky call to go with dual sources for the LTE modem in the iPhone 7 may have gone in a direction the company didn’t initially anticipate. Although Cupertino has not acknowledged the issue for obvious reasons, a new study has shown that a huge performance difference in cellular connectivity exists between the Qualcomm and Intel variants of the new iPhone.
The revelation came from the folks at Cellular Insights who carried out a number of tests to see how good (or bad) the two variants of the iPhone 7 fare under varying wireless network conditions.
The US-based firm tested both variants across three different LTE frequency bands in a simulation mimicking the network connectivity standards adopted by different countries and carriers. Additionally, it also evaluated their performance under varying levels of signal strengths.
“We’ve tested three unique LTE frequency bands, Band 12 (10MHz), Band 4 (20MHz), and Band 7 (20MHz) in 4×2 MIMO configuration using Transmission Mode 4. While both devices achieved the maximum sustained data rates at the cell center, simulating edge of cell scenarios by reducing power level did cause each iPhone to display two very different personalities,” Cellular Insights stated in its report.
The tests clearly showed that the Qualcomm-powered iPhone 7 fares much better consistently when it comes to establishing a stronger connection to LTE networks than its counterpart powered by Intel. To be more specific, the overall results claimed that Qualcomm modems had outperformed the Intel modems by 75% when the signal was at its weakest, and 30% overall.
Read Cellular Insight’s full report on the performance difference between Qualcomm and Intel-powered iPhone 7 on: http://cellularinsights.com/iphone7/