Apple designed the C1 modem entirely in-house [1.] as part of its Apple Silicon efforts, a significant move to reduce its reliance on external vendors like Qualcomm. The C1 modem is featured in the iPhone 16e and is manufactured by TSMC, which produces the chip on 4nm and 7nm process nodes.  The C1 modem supports all the low and mid-band 5G spectrum but it doesn’t support 5G mmWave spectrum. It also supports Wi-Fi 6 with 2×2 MIMO and Bluetooth 5.3, but lacks Wi-Fi 7 support unlike the rest of the iPhone 16 series of devices.

Note 1. In 2019, Apple purchased Intel’s smartphone modem business for $1 billion with the explicit goal of eventually designing its own modems. The C1 modem is the first major outcome of this strategic shift, replacing Qualcomm’s modems in certain Apple devices, starting with the iPhone 16e.  Historically, Apple relied upon Qualcomm to provide most of its iPhone modems so its decision to use the C1 modem in the iPhone 16e is considered a significant move.

Ookla has just analyzed the performance of the iPhone 16e and compared it to the performance of the iPhone 16 on 5G, using Speedtest Intelligence data for Q2 and Q3 2025.

A few important takeaways include:

• The iPhone 16e with the Apple C1 modem performs similarly to the iPhone 16 with the Qualcomm modem in the vast majority of markets we examined.
• The iPhone 16 with Qualcomm modem performs better on more capable mobile networks that have a 5G standalone (SA) footprint supporting higher carrier aggregation combinations and uplink MIMO technology. The iPhone 16e with the C1 modem is not able to achieve the same frontier of performance in these markets due to its technical limitations. Key examples of networks facilitating stronger performance for the iPhone 16 include those in Saudi Arabia, China, India and the U.S.
• In the U.S., T-Mobile users experienced better performance on the iPhone 16, which supports four-carrier aggregation, than iPhone 16e users with the Apple C1 modem, which supports a maximum of three-carrier aggregation.  Median download speed for the iPhone 16 on T-Mobile’s network was 317.64 Mbps, compared to 252.80 Mbps on the iPhone 16e.
• The iPhone 16e performs strongly on other key performance metrics. Across the markets analyzed, it tended to record better download speeds among the 10th percentile of users (those with the lowest overall download speeds), and across 10th, median and 90th percentiles for upload speeds.  At the lower 10th percentile it’s likely that more users are connected solely to low-band spectrum (sub GHz) which offers better coverage but slower speeds.

Japan is the most popular market for the iPhone 16e, with 11.3% of samples from the 16 lineup, followed chiefly by European markets. Adoption of the iPhone 16e depends on a range of factors, including the level of subsidies within a market and to which devices they are directed, level of price sensitivity among consumers, as well as launch timing, and consumer preferences for different form factors and device features.
The combination of these factors likely explains the relatively higher 16e penetration observed in Japan. Beyond the historic appetite for lower-cost, compact iPhones like the SE (to which the 16e is a spiritual successor) and a subsidy structure that favors entry variants, the recent weakness of the yen has made the Pro and Pro Max models more expensive in local terms, prompting elastic buyers (like students and families) to shift down the line-up.

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The iPhone 16e outperforms the iPhone 16 in median upload speed in 15 of the 21 markets we examined. Canada is perhaps the most dramatic example where iPhone 16e median upload speeds of 23.91 Mbps are more than double the iPhone 16’s median upload speed of 11.57 Mbps.  However, once again we saw the iPhone 16 perform strongly in median upload speed in countries with advanced 5G networks such as Saudi Arabia and China.  Although in the US market the iPhone 16e outperformed the iPhone 16 in upload speeds, when we drilled down further (see the US section of this report), we found that upload performance varied between the different operators.

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In the U.S., the iPhone 16 performs better than the iPhone 16e in median download speed for T-Mobile and Verizon customers. This is a slight change from our March 2025 analysis when the iPhone 16e performed better for Verizon customers than the iPhone 16. Because the iPhone 16 supports mmWave spectrum and mmWave is part of Verizon’s 5G Ultra Wideband service, it’s likely that this is a contributing factor in the iPhone 16’s better performance on the Verizon network.  Verizon users on the iPhone 16 only clocked a median download speed of 172.12 Mbps, which is significantly lower than iPhone 16 users on T-Mobile’s network that logged a median download speed of 317.64 Mbps.

When comparing the median upload speeds of the iPhone 16 and 16e across US providers there’s a much different story than when comparing median download speeds. On Verizon’s and AT&T’s networks the iPhone 16e outperforms the iPhone 16 in upload speeds. Verizon iPhone 16e users experienced median upload speeds of 11.51 Mbps compared to Verizon iPhone 16 users that logged median upload speeds of 9.67 Mbps. Likewise, AT&T iPhone 16e users experienced median upload speeds of 8.47 Mbps compared to iPhone 16 users with median upload speeds of 7.09 Mbps.

Instead of seeing the iPhone 16 outperform the iPhone 16e at T-Mobile, the two devices are nearly equal in median UL performance with 16e users seeing median upload speeds of 11.79 Mbps compared to iPhone 16 users with 11.70 Mbps. These results are very similar to what we uncovered in our March 2025 report where we saw clear differences in the iPhone 16e and the iPhone 16 performance for AT&T and Verizon users but nearly equal performance for T-Mobile users.

References:

https://www.ookla.com/articles/iphone-c1-modem-performance-q2-q3-2025

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