iPhone 15 Pro 5G Speeds Could Be Your Reason To Upgrade
Apple's Wanderlust event earlier this month focused mostly on the virtues of a titanium build and the blazing-fast A17 Pro silicon that the company serves with the iPhone 15 Pro pair. But it appears that the phones also feature an upgraded modem that delivers significantly faster speeds over a 5G network.
According to an analysis done by SpeedSmart, the iPhone 15 Pro delivers an average 5G download speed of 255 Mbps, which is up to 24% faster compared to the iPhone 14 Pro when latched on to the same carrier's 5G airwaves. The tests involved T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon, with the iPhone 15 Pro clocking a peak download speed of 300.92 Mbps on T-Mobile's network.
The speed gain is not uniform across all carrier's 5G networks though. Verizon showcased the biggest improvement, while T-Mobile and AT&T served a downlink speed boost worth 22% and 14.6%, respectively. A similar pattern of faster 5G speeds was observed for the cellular upload stream using the iPhone 15 Pro.
However, upload speeds don't exhibit the same kind of dramatic boost as the download rates. SpeedSmart also notes the ping time — which is a marker for network latency — either remained unchanged or "had mostly minor bumps in performance."
A few other connectivity upgrades
The surge in 5G download speeds on the iPhone 15 Pro duo comes courtesy of the Qualcomm Snapdragon X70 modem fitted inside the phones. The iPhone 14 series, for reference, came equipped with the Snapdragon X65 modem. The new Qualcomm cellular modem is also claimed to boost power efficiency, reduce latency, improve aggregation, and enhance coverage.
It's the same modem that also comes fitted inside Android phones powered by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 SoC, such as the OnePlus 11 and Galaxy S23 Ultra. Interestingly, Qualcomm already has an upgraded version, the Snapdragon X75, ready to serve the next wave of flagship phones.
Apple recently inked a fresh deal with Qualcomm covering Snapdragon 5G Modem-RF Systems that expands the partnership between the two brands by another three years. This came after years of reporting, which claimed that Apple was developing its own cellular modem to end its reliance on Qualcomm.
But it seems a faster modem is not the only network and connectivity-related perk that the iPhone 15 Pro provides over the standard trims. The Pro variants also offer support for the Thread networking tech, which is among the core protocols powering the Matter ecosystem to ease your smart home device woes.
Moreover, the iPhone 15 Pro and its Max version are the first Apple smartphones to add support for NavIC, an alternative to GPS that was developed by the Indian Space Research Organization.