This year's newest iPhones had one major change that marked a new stage in the evolution of Apple Silicon: Apple #1Apple's first chip designed to support local wireless connections. The N1 supports Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and the Thread smart home communications protocol, and replaces the third-party wireless chips (mostly made by Broadcom) that Apple used in older iPhones.
Apple said the N1 will provide a more reliable connection for local calling features like AirPlay and AirDrop, but didn't say anything about how users can expect it to work. But Okla, the people behind it SpeedTest app and websiteanalyzed five weeks of user testing data to get an idea of ​​how the iPhone 17 lineup stacks up against the iPhone 16, as well as Android phones with Wi-Fi chips from Qualcomm, MediaTek, and others.
Although N1 is not at the top of the charts, Ookla speaks Apple's Wi-Fi chip “provided faster Wi-Fi download and upload speeds than the iPhone 16 at every percentile studied and in nearly all regions.” The average download speed for the iPhone 17 series was 329.56 Mbps compared to 236.46 Mbps for the iPhone 16; Download speed also jumped from 73.68 Mbps to 103.26 Mbps.
Ookla noted that the N1's best performance seemed to improve most in the bottom 10th percentile of performance tests, “implying that Apple's custom processor is raising the floor more than the ceiling.” The iPhone 17 also didn't top Ookla's global performance rankings: Ookla found the Pixel 10 Pro series to lag slightly behind the iPhone 17 in download speeds, while the Xiaomi 15T Pro with MediaTek Wi-Fi chip showed faster download speeds.
