Apple's $1 billion acquisition of Intel's modem business, coupled with more than five years of development, has paid off, with the company's C1 directly adopting Apple Silicon's approach. Chinese YouTube channel Geek Bay has tested the C1 in the new iPhone 16e under laboratory conditions and verified Apple's claims through actual use.
The first real-world tests of the Apple C1 modem in iPhone 16e show that the modem's performance is on par with previous 5G chips, but it significantly reduces battery power. It’s worth noting that the C1 doesn’t support millimeter wave 5G like other models, but millimeter wave penetration is low in the United States and even lower elsewhere.
In labs and on subway trains, the iPhone 16e's C1 modem was roughly on par with all other iPhone 16 models' Qualcomm modems in regular 5G speeds, and significantly surpassed them in power efficiency.
Testing found that Apple's claims of lower battery usage were roughly correct. Apple claims that the C1 uses 25% less power than previous modems, and under ideal conditions, testing has roughly matched that number.
Specifically, at high signal strength, the average power consumption is
iPhone16 is 0.88w
iPhone16e is 0.67w
The difference between the two is about 24%. In the low-signal test, C1's power consumption was reduced by about 17%:
iPhone16 is 0.81w
iPhone16e is 0.67w
The 5G streaming video running time of iPhone16e is 7 hours and 53 minutes, which is about 53 minutes longer than iPhone16e. The running time of iPhone16Pro is about 1 hour less than iPhone16e.
From these tests, we can't determine how much of these longer streaming runtimes are due to efficiency reasons or due to the iPhone 16e's larger battery capacity. Apple did not provide battery capacity, but the first data shows that its battery capacity is 3961mAh, which is larger than the 3561mAh of the iPhone 16.
But it also clearly shows once again that designing its own Apple Silicon can not only save Apple the licensing fees paid to Qualcomm, but also help better integrate products to provide a better experience. According to reports, Apple is already developing its own C2 modem for future devices, so that most future Apple digital devices are expected to bring cellular connectivity.