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Apple strives to include high-end hardware in its flagship iPhone variants, only it can just practise so much. Years back, information technology started designing its own ARM chips to heave performance, but it nonetheless has to go to other companies to get LTE modems. LTE performance in final twelvemonth'due south Intel-powered iPhone 10 was below the marking set up by competing Android handsets with more advanced Qualcomm modems. However, this year's iPhone XS brings its LTE A-game.

Last twelvemonth, the iPhone X had an Intel XMM 7480 with two×two MIMO support, meaning the phone had two download antenna branches. Qualcomm modems at the time supported 4×4 on carriers with the necessary network infrastructure. Now, Intel's new 7560 has 4×iv, allowing for a more direct comparison with electric current Qualcomm modems.

According to PCMag's testing, the new modem in the iPhone XS does dominate the old iPhone X. However, it still slightly curt of the competition from Qualcomm. PCMag'southward Sascha Segan compared the iPhone XS Max (identical modem to the XS) with the Notation 9, Pixel 2, and iPhone 10. The laboratory testing used band 4 LTE (1700/2100MHz), which is used by carriers like T-Mobile and Verizon.

In the lab, the new iPhone most doubles the maximum speed of the iPhone X. It tops out around 400Mbps just like the Annotation 9 with its Qualcomm X20 modem. That'south thanks to the addition of 4×4 MIMO. Although, throughput for the iPhone XS falls faster than the phones with X20 and older X16 modems with fifty-fifty modest bespeak drops. The iPhone XS notwithstanding remains competitive downwardly to almost no indicate, though. The iPhone X is consistently behind the rest, and information technology drops connection completely before the others.

PCMag too looked at existent-earth speed information from Ookla Speedtest (disclosure: ExtremeTech'south parent company Ziff Davis besides owns Ookla). The iPhone XS showed an average of half dozen.6Mbps faster downloads on all United states carriers compared with the iPhone X. In Canada, that deviation is a whopping 20.2Mbps. Anyone upgrading from the iPhone seven would see an even larger 9.9Mbps increase in the Us and 31.6Mbps jump in Canada.

The operation of Intel's latest Intel modem is more than of import than usual because that'south all Apple is using now. The XMM 7560 is the first Intel LTE modem with support for all four big U.s.a. carriers, and then Apple tree doesn't need to separate its production with both Intel and Qualcomm modems — all iPhone XS units will include the Intel modem. Thankfully, that's not a downgrade similar it was in the by.

Now read: Qualcomm Accuses Apple of Giving Trade Secrets to Intel, Apple's AirPower Charger May Be Doomed by Overheating, Comm Issues, and Apple Just Killed the All-time, Most Affordable iPhone It Always Congenital