Will the signal of iPhone 12, the lightest and thinnest 5G mobile phone, be good?

"Today, we bring 5G to iPhone. This is an epoch-making and exciting moment for all of us," said Apple CEO Tim Cook at Apple's new product launch yesterday.

After the release of iPhone 12, many netizens believed that it did not have much innovation. In fact, the A14 Bionic chip and support for 5G are the biggest highlights of iPhone 12.

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The A14 Bionic chip was already unveiled on the iPad at the launch event in September, and this time, Apple also called it another milestone in the history of the iPhone. The A14 is the world's first mobile chip using a 5nm process, integrating 11.8 billion transistors, using a new 6-core CPU and Apple's latest 4-core GPU, and the operating speed and image processing speed are both increased by 50%. Compared with competing smartphones, the iPhone 12 has the fastest CPU and GPU speeds.

The performance and strength of the A14 Bionic chip can be intuitively derived from the running points, so what about the 5G level of the iPhone 12?

What is Apple's first 5G phone like?

iPhone supports 3G, 4G, and 5G about a year later

In June 2008, Apple launched the first 3G phone, iPhone 3G, but in June 2007, there were already 200 million 3G users worldwide. According to data from the Global Suppliers Association (GSA), in December 2007, 190 3G networks covered 40 countries and regions.

In September 2012, Apple's first 4G phone, the iPhone 5, was released. In April of the same year, Samsung launched the first 4G LTE phone, the Galaxy S Aviator, before Apple. Going back further, the world's first 4G phone, the HTC Evo 4G, was launched in June 2010.

In October 2020, Apple's first 5G mobile phone was launched, while its competitors, including Huawei, Samsung, OPPO, vivo, etc., had already rushed to launch 5G mobile phones in 2019.

From this, it can be seen that whether it is from 3G to 4G or from 4G to 5G, Apple is not the first to "try out new things", and is about one year behind other manufacturers on average.

Being late has its advantages. Consumers who dare to try are the first to test the waters. The shortcomings of the first batch of 5G mobile phones on the market are gradually revealed, such as short battery life, unstable signals, "castrated" frequency bands, and not light and thin enough... Apple, which entered the market later, seems to have performed well in these aspects and its advantages are prominent.

iPhone 12 is the phone that currently supports the most 5G bands

Arun Mathias, Apple's vice president of wireless technology and ecosystem, said at the press conference that Apple started with hardware design to customize 5G antennas and radio components to accurately determine how to best operate the entire system and include the most 5G frequency bands while saving space.

Globally, 5G is deployed in two frequency bands: Sub-6GHz and millimeter wave. The United States has more millimeter wave deployments, while other countries are currently mainly deploying in the medium and low frequency bands, that is, in the Sub-6GHz frequency band. As early as the end of 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 5G system medium and low frequency band experimental frequency use licenses to the three major operators. According to the frequency band number, China Telecom and China Unicom's 5G frequency band number is n78, China Mobile's frequency band number is n41 and n79, and China Radio and Television also obtained the frequency band number n79.

This means that a full-network 5G mobile phone needs to support n41, n78 and n79 at the same time. However, some 5G mobile phones on the market do not support n79.

According to information on Apple's official website, the iPhone 12 series phones support 14 other 5G NR bands in addition to the n41, n78 and n79 mentioned above, far more than the mainstream Android phones on the market. However, it is worth noting that considering that the domestic millimeter wave deployment is not yet mature, currently only the US version of the iPhone 12 supports millimeter waves.

In response to the problem of high power consumption of 5G, Apple officially stated that it has created a highly integrated complete system for the iPhone 12 series of mobile phones. For example, the iOS architecture has been optimized so that various apps can benefit from 5G without using more power. The newly added smart data mode can automatically switch to LTE mode when the iPhone does not need to use 5G to save power.

In terms of weight, the iPhone 12 mini is also the lightest and thinnest 5G mobile phone on the market.

However, some analysts believe that the current 5G network deployment is not mature enough, and the iPhone 12 is in an awkward situation, like a Ferrari running on a village road.

On the one hand, according to tests of 5G networks in 125 regions in the United States conducted by RootMetrics, a division of research firm IHS Markit, in the mid- and low-frequency bands, 5G speeds are only slightly faster than 4G LTE, and are still several years away from achieving the speeds promised by mobile operators. In the high-frequency millimeter wave band, although 5G network speeds are much faster, the signal will deteriorate rapidly. On the other hand, applications that use 5G to provide new features have not yet been developed. In the 4G era, it was mobile applications that drove the development of 4G.

As for whether Apple’s first 5G mobile phone is really the strongest 5G mobile phone and where it will eventually go, it still needs to be evaluated based on the actual experience of end users.

Returning to Qualcomm, can iPhone 12 solve the "signal" problem?

In addition to watching the 5G network and waiting for the 5G network to be deployed more maturely, another important reason why Apple only launched its first 5G mobile phone in October this year was that it reached a settlement with Qualcomm and used Qualcomm's 5G baseband chip.

The mobile phone chips we often talk about include the application processor (AP) responsible for the process and the baseband (BP) responsible for processing communications. Although Apple's self-developed application processor A series chips have strong performance, it has always used baseband chips from other manufacturers.

When Apple first made mobile phones, starting with the iPhone 2G, it used Infineon's baseband. However, Infineon's baseband chips were not advanced at the time. When Nokia and Motorola began to support 3G 4 or 5 years ago, Infineon still did not support 3G. Its market positioning was just a backup low-cost source for the mainstream market.

Jobs chose Infineon, on the one hand because of the high integration of its baseband single chip, and on the other hand because Apple had just started making mobile phones and the boards were small, so other manufacturers did not look down on it.

The actual effect is predictable. The first three generations of iPhones using Infineon's baseband chips had weak signals. In the fourth generation, Apple directly wrapped an antenna on the outside of the phone to improve the signal, which led to the subsequent "antenna gate" incident.

In 2010, Intel acquired Infineon's wireless division for US$1.4 billion. Jobs expressed his happiness at the time, but ended its cooperation with Infineon and began using Qualcomm's baseband chips starting with the iPhone 4s.

It should be noted that before Apple launched the iPhone, Intel had its own wireless device chip division, but sold it to Marvell in 2006. Later, in the era of mobile Internet, Intel acquired Infineon's wireless division to make up for its mistakes, and then purchased the CDMA2000 patents of VIA Technologies, a subsidiary of VIA, for US$100 million in September 2015 to solve the CDMA patent problem.

In 2017, Intel launched the first Gigabit LTE baseband chip XMM 7560, which integrates CDMA and realizes full network access. It is reported that the parameters of this baseband chip are equivalent to Qualcomm Snapdragon X16 LTE.

Soon after Apple "enjoyed" Qualcomm's exclusive supply of baseband chips, it felt that Qualcomm's patent fees were too expensive, and on the other hand, it did not want to rely entirely on Qualcomm for baseband chips. In 2017, it began to mix Qualcomm and Intel baseband chips on the iPhone 7. At that time, foreign media reported that Apple deliberately limited the network speed of the iPhone 7 with built-in Qualcomm baseband in order to keep the performance of the two versions consistent.

Qualcomm is the undisputed leader in the field of mobile communications. It not only occupies the high-end chip market in the field of smartphones, but also obtains high profits through huge patent licensing. However, its business model based on patent licensing has always been questioned. Many countries and regions around the world have launched large-scale antitrust investigations and lawsuits against it, including Apple.

In January 2017, three days after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it would launch an antitrust investigation into Qualcomm, Apple filed a patent lawsuit against Qualcomm in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, accusing Qualcomm of "monopolizing the wireless chip market" and claiming nearly $1 billion in compensation. In May of the same year, Qualcomm also began a series of counter-lawsuits against Apple.

After a year-long legal battle, the two sides reached an agreement that Qualcomm would pay Apple in return for Apple using only Qualcomm chips from 2011 to 2016. At the same time, Qualcomm was opposed by the European Commission for suspected monopoly and was fined 997 million euros (about 1.2 billion U.S. dollars).

However, the patent war between the two sides has not ended. In 2018, iPhone models equipped with Qualcomm baseband chips were banned from sale in China due to patent issues such as window switching. This also led to the escalation of the conflict between the two sides. Subsequent Apple mobile phones, namely the iPhone XS, XS Max, XR and iPhone 11 series, had no choice but to use Intel's baseband chips.

However, whether in terms of parameters or user experience, Intel's baseband chip performance is not as good as Qualcomm's. When problems occurred with the LTE/Wi-Fi signals of iPhone Xs/Xs Max, some users attributed the problem to the use of Intel baseband.

Intel, which cannot compete with Qualcomm in terms of patents, has also invested a lot in the baseband field, and has been researching 5G baseband chips for Apple, its big customer.

In November 2018, FastCompany quoted insiders as saying that Intel had formed a team of thousands of people to develop 5G baseband for the new iPhone. However, the larger amount of data put pressure on the baseband chip and RF antenna, causing the 5G iPhone prototype to fail to meet heating and battery life requirements. Apple had no choice but to work with Intel for further coordination.

Finally, Intel completed the development of the 5G chip XMM 8160 in 2019, but Intel said at the time that the chip would not start shipping until 2020. According to Apple's mobile phone release plan, the first 5G mobile phone will be released in September 2020.

The final result was that Apple and Qualcomm reached a settlement in the U.S. Federal Court in San Diego, California on April 17, 2019, and Apple repaid patent fees to Qualcomm. On the same day, Intel announced its withdrawal from the 5G mobile modem business. This means that Apple's first 5G mobile phone, the iPhone 12, is the first mobile phone to use Qualcomm's baseband after reconciling with Qualcomm.

But another question arises: Apple, which has always been unwilling to be "monopolized" by one company in a certain technology for a long time, will go the path of self-development when faced with the possibility that Qualcomm may be the only choice for baseband chips?

The possibility of Apple designing its own baseband chip

Judging from Apple’s development history, Apple seems to be keen on the path of self-research.

Since 2010, the self-developed A4 chip has been used.

In terms of GPU, while cooperating smoothly with Imagination, Apple has been planning its own GPU self-development plan since 2013, gathering relevant talents in the industry to form a team, and even reaching out to Imagination. In 2017, Apple announced that it would abandon all Imagination technologies in the next two years and develop its own GPU. The final result is obvious to all. Today, the A14 Bionic chip, which integrates the latest self-developed GPU, ranks first in the image processing speed in the field of smartphones.

In July this year, Apple officially announced that it will migrate Mac computers from Intel's X86 platform to its self-developed ARM processor within two years. The first Mac equipped with Apple's self-developed processor may be released in November this year.

These actions of Apple seem to indicate that one day in the future, Apple will also launch its own baseband chips. In addition, in July 2019, Apple acquired most of Intel's smartphone modem business for US$1 billion. When commenting on this acquisition, Cook said that this acquisition will allow Apple's wireless technology patent portfolio to exceed 17,000. Apple will own and control core technologies in its long-term strategy, which reveals Apple's ambition to develop its own baseband.

Analysts have previously pointed out that if Apple develops its own baseband chips, it will benefit from multiple aspects, and the biggest impact is of course to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm. According to the analysts' reasoning, if Apple launches its own 5G chipset in 2024, assuming that it can save $5 per iPhone, each iPhone is priced at $740 and the shipment volume reaches 230 million units, then Apple's overall gross profit may increase by about $1.2 billion.

In the agreement signed with Qualcomm, Apple needs to purchase Qualcomm's 5G baseband for at least the next four years, including:

• From June 1, 2020 to May 31, 2021, some Apple products need to use Qualcomm X55 baseband chips;
• From June 1, 2021 to May 31, 2022, some Apple products will need to use Qualcomm X60 baseband chips;
• From June 1, 2022 to May 31, 2024, some Apple products will be required to use Qualcomm X65 or X70 baseband chips.

This means that if Apple develops its own baseband chip, it will not be launched until at least four years later.

However, some analysts believe that it will take about 1,000 top talents and engineers and at least five years for Apple to develop its own baseband chip, and the biggest difficulty is the patent issue. Apple is more likely to integrate the existing baseband chip into its own A series chip.

Since the launch of the iPhone, Apple’s innovative capabilities have been obvious to all, and most of its products and technologies are regarded as industry trendsetters.

Perhaps four years from now, Apple will really be able to use its own baseband.

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