Not long after Apple's iPhone 13 series mobile phones were listed, the news of the iPhone 15 began to circulate on the Internet.
On January 11, 2022, there is still more than a year to go before the release of Apple's iPhone 15 series mobile phones, but the #iPhone 15 or will all carry Apple's self-developed chips # topic rushed to the first place in Weibo hot search.
The hot search contains news that Apple plans to launch the first self-developed 5G baseband chip in 2023, which has been developed and is establishing a closer cooperative relationship with TSMC to reduce its dependence on Qualcomm.
Previously, Tianfeng International analyst Guo Mingqi had said that Apple's 5G baseband chip would debut in the iPhone model in 2023 as soon as possible. Qualcomm financial officer Akash Palkhiwala also revealed that it is expected that the proportion of Qualcomm 5G baseband chips shipped in 2023 will be reduced to 20%, which also hints at the arrival of Apple's self-developed 5G baseband chips.
It is worth mentioning that under the hot search topic, many netizens are very much looking forward to Apple's self-developed 5G chip, hoping that Apple's self-developed chip can improve the current problem of poor signal of Apple's iPhone.
Apple's iPhone signal problem has always been a "big problem", and there are obvious problems with poor signal in several generations of iPhones, but can Apple's self-developed 5G chip really improve the iPhone signal problem?
First of all, Apple is not a technology company involved in communication business, although Apple can involve powerful chips such as M1, but due to the accumulation of communication technology patents, it is still difficult to develop 5G chips alone, after all, there is a saying called interlacing like a mountain.
To develop its own 5G chips, Apple needs to climb over a large number of communication technology patent walls, and a large number of communication standards and essential patents are controlled by traditional communication companies such as Qualcomm, Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and Intel.
Fortunately, Apple has previously acquired Intel's baseband research and development team. In 2019, Apple acquired Intel's smartphone baseband business unit for $1 billion (about 6.8 billion), thereby obtaining a wireless technology patent portfolio of about 2,200 Intel employees and more than 17,000 pieces, which allowed Apple to some extent to complete the accumulation of communication technology from 2G to 4G.
Apple stands on the basis of Intel communication technology to develop 5G chips, its research and development difficulties will be greatly reduced, but even so, Apple still needs to climb over the 5G technology patent wall. In addition, Apple also needs to spend a lot of time and economic costs to do a lot of communication testing with global operators.
All in all, Apple in 202 to launch a self-developed 5G chip is very difficult, even if Apple can be launched on time, its performance can catch up with Qualcomm, Huawei, MediaTek has been very mature 5G chip solution is also very debatable, relying on self-developed 5G chip to improve the signal problem may be just a fantasy.
In fact, the problem of Apple's poor iPhone signal has a long history, starting from the iPhone 8 era mixed with Intel baseband, Apple's mobile phone "signal gate" problem has become more and more intense. After the iPhone X, Apple's mobile phone fully adopts Intel baseband, and signal difference has become a significant feature of Apple's mobile phone. However, in the iPhone 12 generation, Apple has fully returned to the Qualcomm Snapdragon baseband, but the signal problem has not been improved.
The latest iPhone 13 series uses qualcomm Snapdragon X60 5G baseband, which is consistent with the baseband of other Android flagship phones, but there are still a large number of netizens who reflect that the iPhone 13 series will still have poor signal problems.
No matter what baseband is used, the problem of Apple's poor iPhone signal is still there, so the problem is obviously not in the baseband.
In addition to the baseband, the factors that affect the signal are antenna design and system scheduling. In fact, there are already many people who suspect that there is a problem with the antenna design of the iPhone, and at the iPhone 13 conference last year, Apple also emphasized that this generation of iPhone redesigned the antenna, which seems to imply that the signal problem of the iPhone 13 series has improved, but from the user feedback, this improvement is not obvious.
In addition to the antenna, another possibility that causes the iPhone's signal to be poor is that Apple has not focused on communication functions for the sake of ensuring battery life.
In addition, Apple is not a company involved in the communication business, does not have the design capabilities of the entire operation process from antenna to RF to baseband, and lacks the ability to optimize the entire communication process. In this regard, Huawei has a greater advantage as a global communications industry giant, which is also known for huawei mobile phones with good signals.
All in all, the idea of expecting Apple's self-developed 5G chip to improve the iPhone's signal problem is not reliable. The significance of Apple's self-developed 5G chip is only at the strategic level of the company, which can make the supply of core components of the iPhone no longer subject to people, and it does not have much to do with consumers. In 2019, Apple CEO Tim Cook responded to Apple's acquisition of Intel's baseband business, saying that Apple's purpose was to "control the core technology."