A new report by Opensignal presents a rough picture of how the performance of 5G in the iPhone 12 line compares to Android smartphones in the United States. Most of the 25 fastest 5G smartphones ended up being manufactured by Samsung, and while the iPhone 12 had a 2.3x jump in 5G speeds compared to the iPhone 4G speeds, Apple’s first 5G iPhones were at the end of the pack and behind at least 25 Android Smartphones for overall download speed.
OpenSignal shared the new report on 5G performance in the US by smartphone model today, with Samsung’s new Galaxy S21 5G ranking first, with an average 5G / 4G download speed of 56 Mbps.
One of the big conclusions was Samsung, responsible for 60% of the 25 best 5G performances.
TCL’s Revvl 5G and OnePlus 8T + ranked second and third, respectively, averaging 49.8 and 49.3 Mbps. The Velvet 5G from LG came in 25th, with 37.8 Mbps.
Where’s the iPhone 12 in all of this? Undoubtedly disappointing for iPhone 12 owners, Apple’s first 5G-enabled smartphones lagged behind their Android competitors at general average speeds.
The iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max had average download speeds of 36.9 and 36.2 Mbps with the iPhone 12 and 12 mini arriving at 29.6 and 32.9 Mbps, respectively.
OpenSignal notes that since previous iPhones were behind Android when it came to 4G speeds with Intel instead of Qualcomm modems, the iPhone 12 brought a 2.3x higher increase in 5G vs 4G speeds in the U.S. than competitors like Samsung, OnePlus etc. skip to 5G.
The chart below shows how Apple managed to close the gap with respect to 5G performance with Qualcomm modems, but it is still behind all Android competitors.
Since the iPhone 12 line is using Qualcomm 5G modems as Android devices and even including mmWave on all models, we were curious as to why it looks like the iPhone is lagging behind and looked for Opensignal.
Ian Fogg, who wrote this report and leads the OpenSignal analytics team, said that Samsung and other Android makers are ahead of Apple when it comes to RF design, as smartphone components in addition to the modem influence the 5G / 4G performance. For example, Samsung’s Galaxy S21 is its third generation of 5G smartphones, while the iPhone 12 line is Apple’s first. Therefore, Apple may have work to do to update the front-end RF design.
Finally, the report highlights that when 5G arrives on the iPad, it should make a good difference for users:
Today, we see average download speeds on iPhone Pro’s 5G models that are on average 36% faster than the speeds of the latest iPad Pro models for mobile. With a new 5G-capable SoC, future iPad Pro users are expected to achieve speeds at least as fast as iPhone 12 users.
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