- IPhone 16E’s 5G modem has surpassed the iPhone 16s in some tests
- Its lack of MMWAVE -SUPPORT is possibly the only thing that holds it back
- This is good for future iPhones and future versions of this modem
An interesting aspect of iPhone 16E is that it uses Apple’s C1 modem. This is Apple’s first internal 5G modem and so far the iPhone 16E is the only device you find it in.
Since this is a cheaper phone than the rest of the iPhone 16 series, you can expect the C1 to track the Qualcomm modem used in them but actually suggests testing that C1 may offer better performance in most situations.
OOKLA (VIA 9TO5MAC) has collected data from iPhone 16 and iPhone 16E users in the USA and found that iPhone 16E offers 10Th Percentile download speeds of 27.35 Mbps compared to 16.66 Mbps on the iPhone 16. These are essentially the speeds that users experiencing the lowest performance on both phones can expect.
For median download speeds, the iPhone 16E also comes out on top, at 217.64 Mbps compared to 210.55 Mbps on the iPhone 16. At the top end, the iPhone 16 wins wins with 90Th Percentile download speeds of 756.13 Mbps compared to 560.4 Mbps on iPhone 16E.
Although these upper speeds could be skewed by the fact that the iPhone 16E does not support faster MMWAVE 5G, while OOKLA suspects future versions of the C1 modem, it will support this.
Equally good for uploads
The iPhone 16E and its C1 modem are similar impressive when looking at median upload speeds, with iPhone 16 comfortably beaten over all three tested carriers (T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T).
All of this is good news for Apple as it suggests that the company could switch to its internal modem across all new iPhones without sacrificing speeds, and it’s all more impressive as Apple claims that C1 is also more effective than other iPhone modema, which means it shouldn’t have the life of the battery, so much.
It puts the iPhone 16E in the unusual position to actually have an advantage over Apple’s top models – except for its lack of MMWAVE support – but that’s another reason to buy this phone and to look ahead, it’s a promising sign for future iPhones, especially since the next generation of this modem might be even better.
