It’s safe to say that Apple has high hopes for the iPhone 16e’s custom 5G modem. As many of you know, Apple announced the iPhone 16e yesterday, which is basically the iPhone SE 4, but with a different name.
Apple has high hopes for its first in-house 5G modem used inside the iPhone 16e
In any case, that phone comes with the Apple C1, the company’s first in-house 5G modem. In fact, an analyst from GlobalData said that the iPhone 16e “iPhone 16e serves as a testbed for Apple’s modem”.
What we’re referring to when we say “high hopes” is the battery life, mostly. In its press release, Apple said that the “C1 is the first modem designed by Apple and the most power-efficient modem ever on an iPhone”, while adding that the “advanced power management of iOS 18 all contribute to extraordinary battery life.”
The company basically said that it’s more power efficient than Qualcomm’s modem used in other iPhone 16 smartphones. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of an impact will it have on the battery life.
This modem (and the iPhone 16e with it) doesn’t support 5G mmWave tech
There’s one thing to note here, though. The iPhone 16e does not feature 5G mmWave technology, in other words, that Apple C1 modem does not support it. So, it technically does not offer faster speeds than Qualcomm’s solution, not at all.
With that being said, the iPhone 16e is priced at $599, more than initially reported. It’s still $200 more affordable than the iPhone 16. It does make some concessions compared to the iPhone 16, though.
The phone a lacks the ultrawide camera on the back, it only has one camera. It lacks mmWave support, and a Dynamic Island on the front. On top of that, the 48-megapixel camera on the back does not have all the features the one on the iPhone 16 offers, and so on.