86 MACWORLD MARCH 2020
FEATURE APPLE’S A14 PROCESSORApple will almost certainly use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X55 modem in the iPhone 12.
LPDDR5 being produced by Samsung is
about 30 percent faster than the LPDDR4x
used in the iPhone 11, and at least 30
percent more power efficient. Memory
bandwidth is a critical bottleneck for lots of
tasks, but especially mobile graphics
performance and image processing.
Of note: Samsung is currently only mass-
producing 12-gigabit LPDDR5 chips. If Apple
uses it as a supplier, it would likely mean an
upgrade to 6GB of RAM in the iPhone 12. You
can’t neatly produce 4GB of RAM using 12
gigabit chips, but you can easily use four
chips to produce a 6GB (48 gigabit) package.
5G SUPPORT VIA
SNAPDRAGON X55 MODEM
While wireless modems and radios are
part of the A14 chip itself, it’s such a critical
part of the iPhone that it’s worth dissecting
what we might expect.
This year, Apple is widely expected to
include 5G support (go.macworld.
com/5gsp) in the new iPhones. It seems
likely, in part thanks to the settled lawsuits
and licensing agreements between Apple
and Qualcomm, that all premium iPhones
will have the X55 modem. Lower-end
models might even have that modem, but
with the 5G radio disabled via software.
This would give iPhones one of the
very best cellular modems around, with
support for lots of LTE features and global
networks as well as the most advanced 5G
available at the time. It doesn’t necessarily
put it ahead of anything on the Android
front, though: Android phones with the
X55 modem will ship throughout 2020.
As far as other wireless features go we
can expect continued support for Wi-Fi 6,
Bluetooth 5, NFC, and ultra-wideband (UWB).
The latter was a surprise addition for the
iPhone 11, but I don’t expect another wireless
surprise is in the works for the iPhone 12. ■