Apple’s iPhone 12 family of smartphones are equipped with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 modem, which matches rumors about the new devices prior to their launch.
An iPhone 12 teardown video on Chinese social networking site Weibo gives a close look at the L-shaped logic board and the modem chip.
The X55 offers support for both 5G mmWave networks and 5G Sub-6GHz networks, along with 5G/4G spectrum sharing, and it is Qualcomm’s second-generation 5G chip after the X50.
Reports in 2019 indicated Apple would use the X55 modem in its iPhone 12 lineup, and at the time, the X55 was Qualcomm’s fastest and newest 5G modem. Qualcomm in February 2020 introduced the X60 modem built on a 5-nanometer process, which is more power efficient than the 7-nanometer X55.
MacDailyNews Take: The X60 arrived too late for iPhone 12, but expect to see it appear in Apple’s iPhones next year before Apple’s modem designs come to fruition.
See also:
• Intel completes sale of smartphone modem business to Apple – December 2, 2019
• Apple pushing hard to get their own 5G modem into 2022’s iPhones – October 11, 2019
I am looking forward to having an Apple 5G modem when I next upgrade from my iPhone 12 Pro.
And Apple freein itself from greedy Qualcomms doubledip.
How is that company still getting away with it when so many other tech companies are being targeted for practices that look completely philanthropic by comparison. Let’s hope Apple can pull off what no one else seemed capable of … No doubt with various legal quarrels replacing the relative short lived calm we presently see. Maybe their other chip expertise might help close the gap.
Apple will win the war, takes time to design something worthwhile from nothing. Wall Street is mostly clueless on the long term.
Not from nothing! Remember Apple bought Intels modem-departement.
Apple needs to poach whomever their top engineer is. They’ve certainly got the $$$