What’s more, there was “no statistical winner in the United States during Q4 2023” between Apple’s iPhones and Samsung’s Galaxies that have been at the top of this ranking for years now.


Samsung vs Apple carrier network download speeds
Well, Samsung’s phones did score a tad higher, 114 Mbps median download speed, but with the advent of the iPhone 15 Pro line Apple apparently managed to finally catch up to Samsung phones like the Galaxy S23 series when it comes to 5G speeds. What happened?
Apple gave up on making its own 5G modem
- Snapdragon X70 (standalone Apple A17 Pro modem) – 205.38 Mbps down /14.10 Mbps up / 53 ms latency
- Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 (Galaxy S23) – 173.55 Mbps download / 13.13 Mbps upload / 52 ms latency
- Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 (Galaxy Z Fold 4) – 169.27 Mbps download / 11.95 Mbps upload / 53 ms latency
The chip Apple actually made after a couple of years of engineering efforts was so big that it could occupy half of the internal space in an iPhone, so it had to resort to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X-series modems yet again. Apple poached a number of Intel and Qualcomm employees for its modem project codenamed Sinope, but it immediately faced insurmountable challenges. When the first prototype was tested, for instance, Apple saw that it is very slow and gets hot fast. The biggest change of heart, however, occurred because of the size of Apple’s initial effort, with the resulting modem circuit board as large as half an iPhone.


Qualcomm’s X70 5G chip occupies a fraction of Apple’s own homebrew modem space
T-Mobile could throw a monkey wrench in the iPhone’s download joy
T-Mobile’s 5G standalone network has four-carrier aggregation and soon uplink carrier aggregation – the only network with these capabilities from a top provider in the United States – delivering up to 90% faster uplink speeds than the Samsung Galaxy S23 and enhancing video livestreaming, video calling and gaming. That means uploading a video is twice as fast at T-Mobile.


The S24 Ultra 5G modem specs are again superior to the 15 Pro Max” 
The X75 5G modem is still rated for 10 Mbps download speed maximums, though, so on other carriers it may not offer the same carrier speed advantages as it will on T-Mobile’s 5G network, save for the uplink.