Apple yesterday introduced the new iPhone 16 lineup and as we've done every year since 2015 we're going to dive into it and take a look at the connectivity changes this year the headlines are Wi-Fi 7 satellite messaging and digging into the specs we found an interesting cellular regression stay tuned for the details hi I'm Chris with the mobile internet Resource Center here to give you the news about the iPhone 16 that pretty much no other sites focus on everybody else is covering the cameras and the screen and the new colors and uh the new CPU and all that sort of stuff and that's a lot of where the Apple's focus is and on the new Apple intelligence uh AI features and all that here at the mobile internet Resource Center we don't focus on that stuff we focus on mobile internet and connectivity and every year since 2015 we've kind of dissected the iPhone news to dive into to what's new on the connectivity front and this year just like last year there's not a whole lot new on the cellular front in fact the the new iPhone 16 on paper looks almost identical on the cellular capabilities as the iPhone 15 last year and the iPhone 14 before that even with the only significant change that we found going through the spec sheets being there is a band missing a cellular band LTE band for 46 which was known as LTE laa license assisted access this was the LTE band that let the carriers overlay 4G signal on top of the same spectrum that would normally be used by WiFi 5 GHz so this in the 4G era and it kind of rolled out in 2017 2018 allowed for a really fast turbo boost of 4G but only over a very short distance but still the carriers had deployed um this band in quite a few places we saw evidence of AT&T Verizon and T-Mobile using this for some of their fastest speeds and it's been in use for a while but well it's missing from the iPhone 16 so it's kind of an interesting mystery to see this band disappear from the specs that has been supported on um every iPhone for many many years now um what is the reason why is this being dropped could be because well it's a 4G version of this technology um the 5G version of overlaying uh the 5G signals onto 5 GHz Wi-Fi has not really been deployed yet it's not supported by very many devices including no iPhones so maybe the carriers and apple are just saying well we're just going to wait for the 5G version of this and this is the beginning of some 4G Technologies being retired or it actually could be a technical side effect of the Wi-Fi 7 features which is the other headline feature in the new iPhone so we' got some news on the Wi-Fi 7 front in just a second but so that is the the significant change on the cellular side is one band is missing is that worth not upgrading for is that something actually going to be significant in practice probably not this is we're well into the 5G era and the speed boost that LTE laa used to give is now more than made up far by 5G and the 5G deployments by all the carriers so we do kind of think that only cellular Geeks uh who really dive into the bands you're connecting to might ever even notice that this band is gone but it is interesting to find and dig up a regression in a new iPhone model usually bands are being added not taken away the other change on the cellular front that we expect with the um iPhone 16 is that just like every year Apple will be moving to the next Qualcomm modem chip set and this year's modem would be the x75 now the x75 is qualcomm's first um um 5G Advanced uh modem chip set so it supports the 3G PP release 8 cellular standards the the next evolution of 5G and basically what this means is that this will be a more future proof modem as 5G continues to evolve in the years ahead this modem is ready for the next stage of that Evolution more so than the um you know last year's x70 or the other modems that used in the past so this could be a pretty significant modem chipset upgrade even though on paper the specs look basically the same we won't know for certain if this modem chipet is inside the new iPhones until they're actually torn down because that's the sort of uh lowlevel details that Apple never discloses publicly until somebody tears the the iPhone down and melts the chips and figures out what's actually inside there so that's the the cellular Evolution that we might have coming with the iPhone 16 now the other headline feature on the connectivity front with the iPhone 16 is that it is bringing out Wi-Fi 7 so this is the new Evolution of the Wi-Fi standards that is substantially almost 5 times faster theoretically than the Wi-Fi 6 standard this is a you know basically the the next big evolution of the Wi-Fi industry standards and we've been kind of stuck in the Wi-Fi 6 era for quite a while there was a evolution of Wi-Fi 6 kind of an interim step towards Wi-Fi 7 that used 6 GHz Spectrum called Wi-Fi 6E that has been out for several years but has been very slow to be deployed last year that came out on on the iPhone 15 but only on the iPhone 15 Pro Models the regular iPhone 15 did not get Wi-Fi 6E this year apple is jumping both the iPhone 16 Pro and the 16 regular to Wi-Fi 7 and as we said last year we were expecting that this was going to happen a lot of the industry seem to be skipping over Wi-Fi 60 and was going to jump straight to Wi-Fi 7 the Wi-Fi 7 standard was finalized earlier in 2024 and now we think this is the beginning of the wave of Wi-Fi 7 devices coming out so again this is a great feature to have in your phone but it probably will not matter to you in any practical sense anytime soon because a Wi-Fi 7 radio on a phone only really matters if you're talking to Wi-Fi 7 compatible routers and hotspots and everything like that and those are just now barely peing into the market this is going to be mattering over the next 3 to 5 years but well it's always good to have more future proofing and having the seeing the beginning of this technology pushing into phones which is great we've already seen a few Android phones with Wi-Fi 7 now this is the the first of the iPhone lineup and we expect we'll just see Wi-Fi 7 going mainstream from here on out now the other big connectivity headline feature with the iPhone 16 is not exclusive to the iPhone 16 and that is satellite messaging now if you remember back with the iPhone 14 2 years ago Apple brought out emergency SOS satellite messaging um they jumped ahead of the rest of the industry to be really the first mainstream device that had cellular device that had satellite connectivity built right into it but it was limited to just doing SOS text um so very very limited capability but it was there and it has saved actually quite a few lives in the two years since it was deployed and it was deployed on all iPhone 14 models the iPhone 15 had that same satellite capable radio in it uh and they at the same time they rolled out emergency SOS for Road side assistance not just 911 level emergencies um so still very limited this year apple is rolling out satellite text messaging not just for emergencies but you know text messaging to say hey what do you want to get for dinner or I'm going to be here or hey I have a bad signal I can't call you right now text messaging that works basically anywhere you've got a satellite view of the sky and the cool thing about this is this is not a feature exclusive to the iPhone 16 it is being rolled out to the for iPhone 14 and 15 too they're using the same Global Star Satellite capabilities it's just rolling out to coincide with the iPhone 16 launch and all the other iPhones of the last two years will be getting support as well with the iOS 18 software update that is coming out next week so satellite messaging is coming to a whole lot of recent iPhones and that is a big feature for safety and communication and just general usability and we are excited to see this going mainstream now this is still very limited messaging you're not going to be sending photos it still takes a very long time to send each text message but you now have that option and it's we expect this to continue to be more and more satellite capabilities rolling out and you know this is not just an apple thing we'll be seeing uh T-mobile and starlink starting to roll out satellite messaging later this year and that will be compatible with all recent T-Mobile phones whether they're apple or not so satellite messaging is becoming a thing and uh this is just the start of the always connected era so those are the major connectivity uh improvements that we are seeing in the new um iPhone 16 lineup and well are you excited about any of this let us know are you disappointed about LTE band 46 going away let us know or what else do you think about the new iPhone 16 line let us know about that as well and well well we'll see what we come back with next year when we cover whatever they bring out in the iPhone 17 Rumor Mill has it that next year might be the first time that Apple actually brings out their own 5G cellular chip instead of relying on Qualcomm so we got that to look forward to when uh next year rolls around until then well there'll be plenty of other news here at the mobile internet Research Center so stay tuned these videos are brought to you by our premium members our mobile internet efficient Autos they make it possible for us to track this news and create these videos If you like this video please give it a thumbs up leave a comment subscribe to our Channel or better yet consider becoming a member yourself