JUNE 2019 MACWORLD 49still pretty inefficient.
You’ll get a 5G iPhone some day, but
not until 2020 or maybe even 2021. It will
simply take that long to get reliable and
power-efficient modems for iPhones,
together with enough network coverage to
do really good hardware and software
testing. Apple doesn’t just sell iPhones to a
few million early adopters, after all. A new
iPhone model can expect to sell over 100
million units in its first year, and Apple just
isn’t going to take the risk on networking
gear that might provide an unsatisfactory
user experience.
There’s been a persistent rumor of
Apple working on its own 5G cellular
modems, but you shouldn’t expect that in- Expect the A13 in the iPhone this
year to be paired with the latest Intel
modem, likely the XMM 7660. It’s much
like the XMM 7560 in the iPhone XS
today, but with support for higher
maximum speeds and compatibility with
more LTE bands. ■
The CPU may not change much, but the GPU may grow to 6 cores and the Neural Engine is
probably going to be much bigger.