At the heart of the system, the C1 (Cellular 1) chip first appears in the iPhone 16e. It is also expected to debut in other Apple devices in the coming months and will likely see use across all or most of the iPhone range by this time next year. Apple calls it “the most power efficient modem ever in an iPhone.”

Apple's new iPhone 16e features the company's first in-house 5G modem, baseband chip on the new Apple C1 is made on TSMC 4nm, transceiver maed on 7nm.

It took Apple a big acquisition and many years, but it finally developed a modem worth replacing Qualcomm's with — what does that mean for Android?