iPhones a Wi-Fi perspective
Susinder Rajan Gulasekaran
Founder | Wi-Fi Book Author | Senior Member IEEE
Here is a summary of iPhone models from a Wi-Fi perspective. All the iphones until iphone 5 launched in September 2012 supported only the 2.4 GHz band. The iphone 6 was the first iphone to support 80 MHz bandwidth on the 5GHz band. And 2 spatial stream MIMO technology didn't come to iphones until iphone 6s in September 2015. The performance in previous models with just 1 receive chain, used to be very sensitive to orientation. With 2x2 and maximum ratio combining, the performance sensitivity to orientations improved considerably starting iphone 6s. The first iphone to support 6 GHz band was the iphone 15 pro launched in September 2023. Finally, Wi-Fi 7 arrived to iphone 16 which launched in September 2024.
I hope to see Multi-link operation help with real world robust performance in congested environments and preamble puncturing help with mitigating interference on secondary subchannels. Also with 160 MHz in 6 GHz band and Multi-RU support in Wi-Fi 7, I expect to see slightly better MU OFDMA performance. This is because MU OFDMA is primarily beneficial over single user when the payload airtime is small, and that tends to be the case with 160 MHz bandwidth. The small size MRU in Wi-Fi 7 should help with increased flexibility in RU allocation.
DOCSIS 4.0 and Wi-Fi 7
2 个月I looked up the fcc type acceptance and the iPhone 5 was 1x1 11n. There was a iPad Mini 3 introduced in 2013 that was 11n and 2x2. from Apple tech specs of iPad Mini 3 Wi?Fi (802.11a/b/g/n); dual channel (2.4GHz and 5GHz) and MIMO Thus, Apple introduced 2x2 MIMO on the iPad before the iPhone, which makes sense.
DOCSIS 4.0 and Wi-Fi 7
2 个月Hmm, I could have sworn that iPhone 5 was 2x2 with 300 Mbps PHY rate in 5 GHz band. An Internet search did not help, no mention of MIMO in the Apple iPhone 5 tech specs. Maybe I'll have to try to dig one up. The iPhone 15 pro 6e can run at 160 MHz in the 5 GHz band as well as the 6 GHz band. The iPhone 16 is Wi-Fi 7 and like the Google Pixel 8 and 9 will probably not work at 320 MHz. It will probably work at 160 MHz in the 5 GHz band just like the iPhone 15 pro. The good news is that the pro and regular version of iPhone 16 seem to have the same wifi.
SR QA Test Engineer, Wifi Systems Engineering & Certifications
2 个月I wonder which MLO mode will iPhones support? Is EMLSR single radio or STR dual radio? ALSO are the WIFI chips Qualcom or another chip? Such details are a matter of curiosity.