Very interesting and, unfortunately, disappointing! The XS Max has a worse antenna than the regular XS! Wow! Also, both have even worse reception than the X, which was already a downgrade from the Plus antenna. I am wondering how these new antennas are gonna perform with these new Intel modems.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Other New iPhones: intel or Qualcomm?
- Thread starter slowlife
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Wow!! I’ll be surprised if I can do anything with these new crap Intel iPhones. They sound so awful. I mean, I’ve had such good service on my current Intel iPhone 7, but you guys have convinced me. I must be delusional. It’s not just a matter of some insignificant differences in situations that are rare in the real world - the Intel modems are truly garbage. I guess I’ll be returning my Xs and trying to find another Qualcomm phone to replace my current crappy Intel iPhone.
I don’t know about your situation, but last year the difference between the Intel and Qualcomm iPhone X was very apparent. I had to return the Intel phone as it was almost unusable. The same issue was with the Intel 8 Plus. I finally got the Qualcom X and I’m still using it. The real time difference was there. I don’t know how it is with the 7/7 Plus, I’ve never had either. However, I gotta say that my 6S Plus was still better than the X in terms of signal/reception, but that probably comes down to a weaker antenna in the X to begin with.
Wow. That is really really bad news.
I think a cancel my order and send the XS Max back to Apple. I don't pay so much money for a phone with worse reception.
Yeah. The Intel radios may be the least of their issues. I'd definitely hang tight until more testing is done. I'm quite interested to see what Sasha Seagan and folks over at HoFo come up with.
[doublepost=1537417026][/doublepost]
The fact of the matter is that a lot of areas have weak or no service, and every time you go in or out of service, the Intel iPhone is going to give you less time with service than the Qualcomm equivalent would, and often the Qualcomm one will hold on where the Intel one won't, since more often than having no service is having very weak service. It would be great if we had good service everywhere, but that's simply not the world we live in. There are only so many places we can put steel in the air economically or where they aren't a complete eyesore.
I hear you. I’m surprised that the millions of people worldwide with their Intel iPones haven’t banded together and boycotted Apple. I mean, I never really experience any noticeable issues with mine, but from what you’ve told me, this MUST be happening to people ALL the time - how do people even use these Intel iPhones under all these extreme low signal situations that exist in so many places? Surely, the most logical explanation is that people just don’t realize how crappy their Intel iPhones are? I mean, if they had a Qualcomm modem, there would be SO many places where they currently get no service that they’d suddenly have a GREAT cell signal! WOW!!!
I suppose an alternate explanation might be that, for the vast majority of users the vast majority of time, in the actual, real world, the difference in performance between Intel and Qualcomm modems is so insignificant, most people will never notice a difference. I suppose it’s also possible that many people who’ve had some anecdotal experiences suggesting Qualcomm is superior might not realize that, in the real world, many other variables can affect cellular reception, and their perceived problem with an Intel modem might be just their own biased perception or attributable to a confounding variable of some sort that they haven’t considered. But, clearly, those are not logical explanations because, as you’ve shown in your posts, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it has been proven with metaphysical certainty that Intel modems (including the ones in the yet to be released iPhones) are, to use a highly scientific word, CRAP. It is known.
It does happen all the time, most people are just oblivious to phones' RF performance, even though it's literally the second most important thing that a phone can do. The reality is that people are in and out of weak zones all the time, whether inside of buildings, or just not near a tower. The simple fact of the matter is that people with Intel iPhone have unusable data or No Service more often than people with Qualcomm iPhones, or other Qualcomm devices. At the same time, all cell phone users have No Service some of the time, as there simply isn't cell phone coverage everywhere.
It's not insignificant at all. It has been documented over and over both through testing and on this forum. Your unnecessary and sarcastic posts don't change objective reality. There is always somewhere that the coverage ends or is very weak, and the farther you can push that out away from the tower or inside buildings, the better off you are in terms of having usable data.
You have no idea if that is true or not, as you haven't used the new Intel modem, no one has. Why don't you wait until people test this before your "facts" about a modem that hasn't been used by anyone yet.
airjay75 was making sarcastic and unnecessary posts about the Intel Modem in the iPhone 8/X. The new iPhone is going to be interesting, since we won't know if it's poor RF performance is entirely due to the design of the amplifiers and antennas, or partly due to the Intel radio.
Gotcha, how do you know it will have poor RF performance? Guess we will know soon, no way to know that now though.
This guy states his case that it's not so much the modem, and more the RF chain and antennas on the Xs Max that are causing poor performance:
https://www.wiwavelength.com/2018/09/iphone-xs-and-xs-max-mostly-fail-to.html
This actually makes some sense, as the X didn't get quite as good reception as the 8/8+, and the Xs and Xs Max are very closely based on the X. Intel will just make it that much worse.