Only 'iPhone 12 Pro Max' will feature fastest mmWave 5G, report claims

AppleInsider · September 3, 2020 5:18PM

Only one of Apple's upcoming "iPhone 12" models in 2020 will sport mmWave 5G, a new report claims, though there are reasons to take the prediction skeptically.

Credit: Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider

The "iPhone 12" lineup is largely expected to be the first to bring 5G support to Apple's handsets, including both speedy mmWave 5G and slower sub-6GHz 5G. There is differing information on which specific devices will support spectrum, however.

A new Fast Company report, citing a source in the wireless industry, claims that only the 6.7-inch "iPhone 12 Pro Max" device will support the ultra-fast mmWave spectrum.

That's because, as the source contends, only the largest iPhone expected in the fall will have the space and battery size to support the special antenna design and larger power draw that mmWave would require. Additionally, Fast Company reports that only "iPhone 12" models in the U.S., South Korea and Japan will support the top 5G spectrum.

While battery size and physical internal space are likely issues for 5G deployment, there are already devices smaller than the rumored 6.7-inch form factor of the "iPhone 12 Pro Max" that support 5G. Most notably, the 5.78-inch Samsung Galaxy S20 supports mmWave speeds.

Well-connected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has previously forecast that all four "iPhone 12" models will support 5G, though he didn't specify which type. Other analysts, including several from JP Morgan, predict that two of the four iPhones released in 2020 will support mmWave.

Apple is expected to debut four "iPhone 12" models in 2020. The lineup will likely include 5.4-inch and 6.1-inch "iPhone 12" devices, and higher-tier 6.1-inch and 6.7-inch "iPhone 12 Pro" models.

h4y3s · September 3, 2020 5:59PM

It will be interesting to see if any of this makes any difference in the first year or so of 5G roll out. I don’t see any killer app “use cases” for 5G on an iPhone just now. I’m thinking it will more serve Internet of Things and self driving cars for the foreseeable future

baka-dubbs · September 3, 2020 6:11PM

I just don't think mmWave is going to catch on or be widespread in the next five years. When current advertisement include "Partial coverage" in all of the limited cities that have had a rollout, it doesn't look promising. I think Tmobile's bet on the mid and low band 5g is going to payoff big for them in the next year or two. They have massive amounts of midband spectrum, which doesn't require a antennas on every block and can actually provide service inside of buildings, unlike mmWave. Basically, as long as the 12 comes with sub-6 5g modem, I wouldn't be too concerned.

As to what the benefit 5G could potentially provide, everything high speed mobile devices(laptops and such) to creating actual competition in the home internet market where many parts of the US only has one provider, as well asIOT and other constantly connected devices.

Scot1 · September 3, 2020 6:12PM

If this report is true then countries like Canada and their Apple fans are less likely to open their wallet for a phone that commands a premium price but doesn’t have the same features as our neighbours to the south.

JFC_PA · September 3, 2020 7:23PM

Good update from my iPhone 11 Pro Max then.

Though until the networks actually distribute this widely the feature itself is a huge meh.

mike1 · September 3, 2020 7:42PM

I'd be very surprised if only one of the "Pro" models had the feature.

tobian · September 3, 2020 10:20PM

I’m not very excited about Apple joining this hazardous experiment mmWave. sensitive people are able to tell whether banal 5GHz wifi router present in the room is turned on or off. Bluetooth feels even more aggressive to them. I feel very uncomfortably passing thru airport full body scanners, which uses mmWave.. can’t imagine staying in the frame for longer time. Now imagine you’re in an administrative building, sitting in an position crossing multiple beams of 5G mmWaves ..it warps aura like hell (alot of tai-chi needed to repair it). Expect more ADHDs, sleep disorders, more aggressivity.. for children especially! We’ll see that, but there will always be some misleading excuse.. In the name of progress! Health risks are still being studied, evidence mixed, but it’s not ionizing radiation, so let’s deploy it quickly everywhere! LTE’s just not enough!

fastasleep · September 3, 2020 11:13PM

tobian said:

I’m not very excited about Apple joining this hazardous experiment mmWave. sensitive people are able to tell whether banal 5GHz wifi router present in the room is turned on or off. Bluetooth feels even more aggressive to them. I feel very uncomfortably passing thru airport full body scanners, which uses mmWave.. can’t imagine staying in the frame for longer time. Now imagine you’re in an administrative building, sitting in an position crossing multiple beams of 5G mmWaves ..it warps aura like hell (alot of tai-chi needed to repair it). Expect more ADHDs, sleep disorders, more aggressivity.. for children especially! We’ll see that, but there will always be some misleading excuse.. In the name of progress! Health risks are still being studied, evidence mixed, but it’s not ionizing radiation, so let’s deploy it quickly everywhere! LTE’s just not enough!

[citation needed]

Image: https://forums.appleinsider.com/uploads/editor/m1/3ma4xpt4tlik.gif

[email protected] · September 3, 2020 11:13PM

The ONLY difference between the Pro and the Pro Max must be screen size (and perhaps by virtue of the Max's larger size, battery longevity)! If there isn't complete parity between the two models in every other respect, Apple will be shooting itself in the foot. I can't see Apple doing that.

cndgoose · September 4, 2020 12:12AM

If rumour above hold true that the iPhone 12 max has larger battery and 5G

I’d be interested to know the capacity of the non USA South Korean and Japan iPhone 12 max batteries

M68000 · September 4, 2020 12:37AM

tobian said:

I’m not very excited about Apple joining this hazardous experiment mmWave. sensitive people are able to tell whether banal 5GHz wifi router present in the room is turned on or off. Bluetooth feels even more aggressive to them. I feel very uncomfortably passing thru airport full body scanners, which uses mmWave.. can’t imagine staying in the frame for longer time. Now imagine you’re in an administrative building, sitting in an position crossing multiple beams of 5G mmWaves ..it warps aura like hell (alot of tai-chi needed to repair it). Expect more ADHDs, sleep disorders, more aggressivity.. for children especially! We’ll see that, but there will always be some misleading excuse.. In the name of progress! Health risks are still being studied, evidence mixed, but it’s not ionizing radiation, so let’s deploy it quickly everywhere! LTE’s just not enough!

Indeed, anybody who reads up on 5G will easily find that knowledgeable people are concerned with it. In addition, it seems it may be a power hog - less battery life on a phone is something probably nobody wants.

sdw2001 · September 4, 2020 1:59AM

JFC_PA said:

Good update from my iPhone 11 Pro Max then.

Though until the networks actually distribute this widely the feature itself is a huge meh.

Yeah I’m on a XS Max. Great phone but time for an upgrade.

tobian · September 4, 2020 7:36AM

fastasleep said:

tobian said:

I’m not very excited about Apple joining this hazardous experiment mmWave. sensitive people are able to tell whether banal 5GHz wifi router present in the room is turned on or off. Bluetooth feels even more aggressive to them. I feel very uncomfortably passing thru airport full body scanners, which uses mmWave.. can’t imagine staying in the frame for longer time. Now imagine you’re in an administrative building, sitting in an position crossing multiple beams of 5G mmWaves ..it warps aura like hell (alot of tai-chi needed to repair it). Expect more ADHDs, sleep disorders, more aggressivity.. for children especially! We’ll see that, but there will always be some misleading excuse.. In the name of progress! Health risks are still being studied, evidence mixed, but it’s not ionizing radiation, so let’s deploy it quickly everywhere! LTE’s just not enough!

[citation needed]

Thanks for funny gif mr. asleep. Imagine it like earths magnetosphere, protecting us from various types of mass bombarding earth. It makes life easier here, but any major cosmic event evolving this boubce out leads to transient disharmony. It’s the same with our bodies, we have certain resistence field, measurable. our bodies produce and use electricity within.. look it up.

GeorgeBMac · September 4, 2020 12:25PM

JFC_PA said:

Good update from my iPhone 11 Pro Max then.

Though until the networks actually distribute this widely the feature itself is a huge meh.

T-Mobile is -- and its rolling out the spectrum everybody agrees will be on all iPhone 12's.

Here is their 5G today. While it still has a ways to go, it is simply not accurate to say that 5G coverage does not exist. It's here and it's growing quickly.

No, it won't replace 4G, not for years anyway. But it will supplement it. I would not want to invest in a phone limited to only 4G -- unless i intended to buy a new phone next year and wasn't worried about trade-in values.

T-Mobiles 4G LTE and 5G coverage map today

SpamSandwich · September 4, 2020 6:41PM

People will blow through their limited data plans in mere minutes and not even realize it.

fastasleep · September 4, 2020 10:09PM

tobian said:

fastasleep said:

tobian said:

I’m not very excited about Apple joining this hazardous experiment mmWave. sensitive people are able to tell whether banal 5GHz wifi router present in the room is turned on or off. Bluetooth feels even more aggressive to them. I feel very uncomfortably passing thru airport full body scanners, which uses mmWave.. can’t imagine staying in the frame for longer time. Now imagine you’re in an administrative building, sitting in an position crossing multiple beams of 5G mmWaves ..it warps aura like hell (alot of tai-chi needed to repair it). Expect more ADHDs, sleep disorders, more aggressivity.. for children especially! We’ll see that, but there will always be some misleading excuse.. In the name of progress! Health risks are still being studied, evidence mixed, but it’s not ionizing radiation, so let’s deploy it quickly everywhere! LTE’s just not enough!

[citation needed]

Thanks for funny gif mr. asleep. Imagine it like earths magnetosphere, protecting us from various types of mass bombarding earth. It makes life easier here, but any major cosmic event evolving this boubce out leads to transient disharmony. It’s the same with our bodies, we have certain resistence field, measurable. our bodies produce and use electricity within.. look it up.

Nope.

verne arase · September 4, 2020 11:08PM

Uggh ... I probably going to get a 12 Pro Max, but sure hope that I can get it without mm wave 5G.

It's really a con - as I don't visit downtown, I don't ever expect to ever use mm wave - not to mention that it's something so ephemeral that you really can't expect to have it for more than a few minutes.

Everything stops mm wave - including windows, leaves, and weather. If you don't have line-of-sight to the tower, you don't have mm wave.

Marvin · September 4, 2020 11:46PM

SpamSandwich said:

People will blow through their limited data plans in mere minutes and not even realize it.

A good feature for Safari (both mobile and desktop, due to tethering) to have would be to block auto-downloads of big files. There's an autoplay stopping feature but it still downloads videos. News sites often have multiple videos per page and just scrolling down a page can preload 10-20MB or more. Visit 100 news articles in a day and it quickly uses up data caps. The following page for example is a standard news page but installing a bandwidth app shows it loads over 30MB of data just opening the page:

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/arnold-schwarzenegger-buys-terminator-pipe-205020161.html
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bandwidth/id490461369?mt=12

100 pages like that and that's 3GB before adding Youtube/Netflix/music. Mobile data caps are getting better but video download sizes and quantity go up too.

For some files the browser won't know how big they are as they stream but there can be settings that block downloads from starting until tapped on to start. Stop large images over a certain size and all videos. This should also make pages more responsive.

It would need to be applied at the system level to cover apps. Then it can popup a warning "App is trying to download 400MB of data on mobile connection, is this ok or defer until connected to wifi?". For the App Store, it loads the preview images, which aren't essential, that can have a minimal mode that just shows the descriptions and the previews can be loaded on request.

chasm · September 5, 2020 5:44AM

I feel like a lot of commenters either didn't read the article, or didn't read it very closely: the headline alone makes it clear that this is only talking about one "flavour" of mm (millimetre) wave 5G, not all of "5G."

Despite numerous articles here and elsewhere on the web about the difference between sub-6ghz and mmwave, the commenters above largely seem believe the story is about only one model of iPhone 12 being able to do "5G." That is flat-out wrong.

Mmwave "5G" is not rolling out. Anywhere. It's in the early testing stages and has a LOT of serious obstacles that make it untenable for 99.9 percent of consumers. To use the seriously fast "mmwave" 5G, you have to a) be very close to and b) have a completely unobstructed line of sight to the mmwave tower. It does not work indoors, it does not work if its raining, it doesn't work if there's literally anything between you and that nearby tower. Boy is it fast, but I think most of us would agree those are some pretty serious limitations. In addition to being incredibly easily blocked (a falling leaf would do the job), it has extremely limited range.

Now sub-6ghz "5G" (i.e. the one that is actually rolling out nationwide) is waaaaaay slower than mmwave, but it is still a small improvement (maybe 30 percent in ideal conditions) over current LTE speeds, and offers other back-end efficiencies (like more capacity per tower) that will improve your overall experience somewhat compared to LTE. That's good, hurrah, bring it on and all that. But due to vast overhyping by the industry, everyone thinks they're going to get "mmwave" type speeds everywhere they go when they're on "5G," and nothing could be further from the truth. You're getting sub-6 speeds, which is good -- but most people will barely notice the modest speed increase.

So, to be clear about this report: it is saying all models of the iPhone 12 will be able to work with the common form of 5G, and it's a nice little improvement over LTE. Only one model -- the Pro Max -- may be able to handle the incredibly few hotspots of mmwave "5G". Now that you know the difference, this rumour makes much more sense.

GeorgeBMac · September 5, 2020 7:57AM

chasm said:

I feel like a lot of commenters either didn't read the article, or didn't read it very closely: the headline alone makes it clear that this is only talking about one "flavour" of mm (millimetre) wave 5G, not all of "5G."

Despite numerous articles here and elsewhere on the web about the difference between sub-6ghz and mmwave, the commenters above largely seem believe the story is about only one model of iPhone 12 being able to do "5G." That is flat-out wrong.

Mmwave "5G" is not rolling out. Anywhere. It's in the early testing stages and has a LOT of serious obstacles that make it untenable for 99.9 percent of consumers. To use the seriously fast "mmwave" 5G, you have to a) be very close to and b) have a completely unobstructed line of sight to the mmwave tower. It does not work indoors, it does not work if its raining, it doesn't work if there's literally anything between you and that nearby tower. Boy is it fast, but I think most of us would agree those are some pretty serious limitations. In addition to being incredibly easily blocked (a falling leaf would do the job), it has extremely limited range.

Now sub-6ghz "5G" (i.e. the one that is actually rolling out nationwide) is waaaaaay slower than mmwave, but it is still a small improvement (maybe 30 percent in ideal conditions) over current LTE speeds, and offers other back-end efficiencies (like more capacity per tower) that will improve your overall experience somewhat compared to LTE. That's good, hurrah, bring it on and all that. But due to vast overhyping by the industry, everyone thinks they're going to get "mmwave" type speeds everywhere they go when they're on "5G," and nothing could be further from the truth. You're getting sub-6 speeds, which is good -- but most people will barely notice the modest speed increase.

So, to be clear about this report: it is saying all models of the iPhone 12 will be able to work with the common form of 5G, and it's a nice little improvement over LTE. Only one model -- the Pro Max -- may be able to handle the incredibly few hotspots of mmwave "5G". Now that you know the difference, this rumour makes much more sense.

Yes, that is all true. Every word -- and well said.

But, it's not the whole story: As T-Mobile has suggested, mm-Wave is best compared to a WiFi network and can be used to replace or supplement one. One common example sited is in sports stadiums but there are also industrial applications where it can be used manage the blossoming IoT things there.

Is it here today? No, you are correct, it is not.

Will it be here over the life an iPhone purchased today? Yes, it will become increasingly available.

tobian · September 5, 2020 6:31PM

fastasleep said:
Nope.

And yes. Human body resistance, biomagnetism, all neural communication and synapsis based on electron exchange - electricity, all scientificly proven. I don’t care about your denialism, but thinking what all this means in relation with waves is beneficial.

Only 'iPhone 12 Pro Max' will feature fastest mmWave 5G, report claims

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