There have been conflicting reports about what kind of 5G support the iPhone 12 will offer, specifically, will all this year’s iPhones be receiving mmWave 5G, or will it be limited to specific models or certain countries?
Some have suggested that only iPhone 12 Pro models will get the mmWave 5G faster, while others reported that it will be limited to certain countries. A new supply chain report doesn’t fully answer the question, but sheds some light …
Background
There are two main 5G standards, known as sub-6HGz and mmWave 5G.
Sub-6GHz 5G will be relatively Widely available when iPhone 12 is released. It offers somewhat faster speeds than LTE, but not dramatically. It offers reduced latency and higher capacity per cell tower, so more people should be approaching advertised speeds of 100-150Mbps.
mmWave 5G is the much faster standard, theoretically capable of gigabit speeds, but more typically offers about half of that, around 500Mbps. However, it is extremely short-range: much closer to wifi than LTE. This means that it will only be available in very limited areas, such as airports, large transit stations, stadiums and tourist places.
IPhones will support 5G sub-6GHz for sure; Uncertainty relates to wwWave 5G.
Only half of 2020 iPhones get mmWave 5G
We have long had conflicting reports on whether this year’s iPhones would be compatible with mmWave 5G. Subsequent reports speculated that it could be limited to the US or a handful of countries to include the US, UK, and Canada.
A paywalled Digitimes The report says Apple’s supply chain expects the number of mmWave 5G iPhone shipments this year to halve, compared to previous estimates.
Shipments of mmWave-enabled 5G iPhones for launch later this year are estimated to reach just 15-20 million units by 2020 compared to a previous supply chain estimate of 30-40 million units, leading to intensifies competition among Apple providers.
That doesn’t tell us which specific iPhones get mmWave 5G, whether it will be limited to some models or some countries, but it supports the idea that not everyone will get it.
Picture of fictional phones: Iupdate
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