Here’s why the C1 chip doesn’t have mmWave 5G, says Kuo

Apple’s first modem, the C1 chip, had one notable omission: there’s no support for mmWave 5G, the ultra-fast variant of 5G.

While I expressed my view at the time that this was no big deal, given that there’s been very limited rollout by carriers, it seems there may be a very specific reason for the decision …

The C1 chip took many years to develop

Given Apple’s ability to design Mac processors that have left Intel ones in the dust, you might think that designing a radio chip would be a rather trivial exercise. In reality, it’s very much more complicated than it sounds because mobile data standards are insanely complicated, for three reasons.

First, standards vary around the world, and a chip intended to be used globally needs to support all of them.

Second, even within one country, different carriers often have their own versions of each mobile data standard, and again Apple needs to support all of them.

Finally, in addition to meeting every variation of every current standard in every country, a radio chip also needs to meet all of the previous standards. If 5G isn’t available, the chip needs to fall back seamlessly to 4G, for example. So that’s every variation of every generation in every country.

That’s how you end up with a modem spec list like this:

• 5G NR (Bands n1, n2, n3, n5, n7, n8, n12, n20, n25, n26, n28, n30, n38, n40, n41, n48, n53, n66, n70, n75, n76, n77, n78, n79)
• FDD‑LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 30, 32, 66)
• TD‑LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 48, 53)
• UMTS/HSPA+ (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz) 
• GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
• 5G (sub-6GHz) with 4×4 MIMO
• Gigabit LTE with 4×4 MIMO
• Wi‑Fi 6 (802.11ax) with 2×2 MIMO
• Bluetooth 5.3
• NFC with reader mode
• Express Cards with Power Reserve

Apple made two compromises

We were hearing ahead of time that Apple would be making some compromises with the first version of the chip, and that did indeed turn out to be the case.

Specifically, Apple omitted support for mmWave 5G, and also limited Wi-Fi support to Wi-Fi 6 rather than Wi-Fi 7.

Kuo says mmWave 5G was omitted for power reasons

One of the key benefits of the C1 chip touted by Apple is significantly lower power consumption than the Qualcomm modem chips it replaced.

This, says Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, is the reason the company had to skip mmWave 5G support for now.

While supporting mmWave isn’t particularly challenging, achieving stable performance with low power consumption remains a key hurdle.

However, he says the company is working on solving this problem, and the standard will be supported in the next version.

The C1 refreshed version is under development for mass production next year, aiming to improve power consumption and transmission speed and support for mmWave.

Image: Apple