iPhone X Specs Reviews: Test Claims Qualcomm-Powered Units Still Beat Those With Intel Modems

By Jessica Ferrera, Christian Post Contributor Tuesday, December 05, 2017

A recent test reportedly proved that a Qualcomm modem still performed better than the ones made by Intel, even in an iPhone X.

Consumer technology analyst Cellular Insights recently tested how an iPhone X with modems created by Qualcomm and Intel would perform, according to PCMag.

The results reportedly showed that Qualcomm's modem still beats one from Intel, especially in terms of boosting the iPhone X's LTE performance.

It is important to note that apart from the general difference in configurations, iPhone X units also vary in the modems they use depending on which carriers sell them and what region they are being sold in.

For the said experiment, Cellular Insights focused on the performance of iPhone X units that employed LTE Band 4, which is widely used in North America. It then looked into the devices' network speeds when they experienced different signal strengths, the strongest being -85dBm while the worst was when there was no reception at all.

In a chart provided by PCMag, the study showed that both Qualcomm- and Intel-powered iPhone X devices can perform at about 195 megabits per second download speed within the -86dBm range. However, with a slight move to an -87dBm signal power, the Intel version quickly dropped to over 165 Mbps. Meanwhile, the Qualcomm-running iPhone X maintained the 195 Mbps speed even down to -90dBm.

A sharp fall that brings the speed to 175 Mbps at -93dBm can be seen in the Qualcomm-powered iPhone X, but at that point, the Intel version was already at 160 MB/second.

This is not new, considering that Cellular Insights gathered similar results when they did the same test with the iPhone 7 Plus back in October 2016.

The Australian, Chinese and Indian markets as well as those sold by Sprint, Verizon and U.S. Cellular all use the Qualcomm A1865 modem. On the other hand, Intel A1901 modems are used on the iPhone X units available in most regions and those offered by AT&T and T-Mobile.