A cellular phone needs a modem to send and receive data, make calls and otherwise be more than a handheld video player. Until the iPhone 16E, this essential but unheralded component was sourced from outside Apple.
But Apple prefers to “own the full stack,” or have control over as many pieces as possible. Not just for control, but because Apple can design them to cater to its devices. The new C1 chip in the iPhone 16E is Apple’s first modem for the iPhone, which the company touts as being more power efficient than the Qualcomm chips found in every other current iPhone.
We’ll see how well it performs once we get hands-on time with it. One notable hardware difference is that it supports 5G network speeds below 6GHz – the most pervasive flavor of 5G — but not millimeter wave, which offers much faster speeds but struggles over distances and through objects.
