is a senior reporter who’s been covering and reviewing the latest gadgets and tech since 2006, but has loved all things electronic since he was a kid.
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Ookla has found that Apple’s custom N1 networking chip that integrates the Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread radios in the iPhone 17 family “delivers a clear step-change in real-world Wi-Fi performance” when compared to the Broadcom chip used in the iPhone 16 models. In North America, the iPhone 17 family also outperformed flagship Android phones when it came to Wi-Fi download speeds during the same time period.
On paper, the N1 chip’s Wi-Fi capabilities appear “virtually identical to its Broadcom-based predecessor” in the iPhone 16, according to Ookla. The N1 is also limited to 160MHz channels and doesn’t take full advantage of Wi-Fi 7’s faster 320MHz channels, but for real world users that limitation didn’t have a significant impact.
Using Speedtest Intelligence data gathered during the six-week period after Apple’s latest smartphones were released, Ookla found that the median download and upload speeds of the iPhone 17 family were both up to 40 percent higher than the iPhone 16 family around the world. The N1’s 10th-percentile speeds were even faster at 60 percent higher than the iPhone 16, implying the new chip’s performance improvements are even more noticeable in “challenging Wi-Fi conditions.”
The iPhone 17 family outperformed flagship Android devices like the Pixel 10 family and the Galaxy S25 family in North America, where Wi-Fi 7 devices can use up to three 320 MHz channels, and the N1 should be at a disadvantage. The iPhone 17 family had the highest median and 90th percentile Wi-Fi download speeds of 416.14 Mbps and 976.39 Mbps, respectively. That could change as the number of 320MHz-capable Wi-Fi 7 routers increases in North America, but it reinforces the findings that the N1 can “deliver more consistent performance in non-ideal Wi-Fi conditions.”