Similar to last year’s Apple iPhone 6s, where Apple’s choice of going ahead with Samsung and TSMC chipsets resulted in a difference in performance and battery life, more discoveries about performance irregularities have begun to surface with this year’s iPhone 7 as well.
After GSMArena pointed out how the 32GB version of the iPhone 7 uses a much slower storage module, there is now another report by Cellular Insights that points to varying levels of network reception in places where the network signal could be a bit weak.
Apple this year, with its iPhone 7 models used Qualcomm modems on some and Intel modems on others devices. While the consumer thinks that both in reality should perform identically in the same conditions, testing by Cellular Insights in a report by Apple Insider show irregularities.
While both Qualcomm and Intel-based units performed the same in areas with good coverage, in areas with a fainter signal, Qualcomm units outperformed the Intel ones. By how much? Well, that performance gap would be roughly 30 percent.
To give better insight (rather making things worse) following tests also included other smartphones for comparison like the iPhone 6s, LG G5, Nexus 5X and the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. From the report, its clear that Intel-based iPhone 7 got left in the dust while the Galaxy S7 edge was the winner.
For now it isn’t clear how much of a difference this has made to users of the iPhone 7 (or whether they have even noticed the reception problem). Moreover, Apple recently pushed out an update that addressed earlier reception issues, and customers don’t seem to be reporting too many problems with reception as well (for now).