Despite Apple launching its iPhone 16e earlier this year as the first release with the company’s first proprietary cellular modem, its performance hasn’t managed to beat two Qualcomm-powered Android phones, according to a recent study.
Indeed, a Qualcomm-commissioned study published on May 27, which involved testing the phones in New York City’s various environments while connected to T-Mobile’s sub-6GHz network, has revealed that two Android phones powered by its products perform better than the iPhone 16e and its Apple C1 modem.
Specifically, the company said that it conducted the tests in “near-, far-, and mid-cell” conditions, which refers to the relative distance between a device and a cell tower, and that it included a January 2025 flagship with the Snapdragon X80 modem and a January 2024 flagship with an older Snapdragon X75 modem.
Although Qualcomm didn’t specify the Android phones that smartphone technology testing platform Cellular Insights investigated, these might be the Samsung Galaxy S25 and Galaxy S24, respectively, based on their release dates and included modems.
Androids versus iPhone 16e on 5G
As it happens, the Android phone consistently outperformed the iPhone 16e in all the examined situations, in particular achieving 34.3% to 35.2% better performance in terms of download speeds than the Apple device. Where uploads are concerned, they did even better – reaching 81.4% to 91% higher speeds.
In near-cell conditions, the iPhone 16e managed to reduce the difference, but mid-cell and far-cell conditions again proved more of Android’s forte due to the Qualcomm modems’ support for downlink carrier aggregation and uplink carrier aggregation (DLCA and ULCA) features, whereas the Apple C1 appeared “constrained on the downlink” and missing “observable ULCA support.”
Finally, concluding the report, Cellular Insights’ team explained that:
“The Android A and B smartphones powered by Qualcomm modems deliver measurably superior performance in real-world 5G standalone environments. While the iPhone 16e powered by Apple C1 performs adequately under optimal RF and network load conditions, it lags significantly in edge cases – the very scenarios where next-generation modems are expected to excel.”
Furthermore, they added that users operating in crowded urban, indoor, or uplink-intensive conditions would benefit from better 5G performance in Android smartphones, with no longer just theoretical advantage but “quantifiable, repeatable, and operationally significant.”
Elsewhere, the iPhone earlier this year reached a historic milestone as it surpassed an extraordinary $2 trillion in lifetime sales, despite its sales slightly dropping from the record highs of 2022, twice as much as the total amount spent by NASA throughout its history, as the device remains one of the most recognizable and popular smartphones around the world.
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