With the iPhone 7, Apple diversified its modem supply for the first time. The company chose Intel and Qualcomm to provide baseband chipsets for two variations on the phone, the Intel version with GSM/WCDMA/LTE and Qualcomm’s with GSM/CDMA/WCDMA/TD-SCDMA/LTE support. Qualcomm’s modem powers the Verizon, Sprint, and SIM unlocked iPhone 7 and 7 Plus. If you have one of those versions, congrats! Your phone is capable of much better cellular reception than the Intel model, according to extensive testing from Cellular Insights.
You can check out the full test results, methodology, hardware details, and analysis here, and it’s definitely worth a read for the more technically minded. The bottom line is that the Intel variant of the iPhone 7 Plus consistently underperforms the Qualcomm version in LTE throughput. Intel’s chipset doesn’t support Enhanced Voice Services, or Ultra HD Voice, while Qualcomm’s does, though it doesn’t matter much because Apple has turned off this feature in the iPhone (despite its ability to significantly improve audio quality). T-Mobile’s network supports the advanced LTE Ultra HD Voice feature, but T-Mobile’s iPhone 7 models all have Intel modems.
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