iPhone 16 Promises Blazing Fast WiFi 7 Speeds But A Hidden 160 MHz Limitation Is Secretly Keeping Performance Stuck At WiFi 6E Levels

Apple launched the iPhone 16 lineup with a plethora of upgrades not only on the outside but in terms of internals as well. While the processor and RAM have been upgraded, the company made sure that the devices do not get left behind when it comes to connectivity. The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro models came with WiFi 7 technology for faster download and upload speeds, but based on recent testing, the devices struggle with performance.

iPhone 16 WiFi 7 performance is not at all impressive as it does not utilize the full 320 MHz channel width

Apple promised up to five times better speeds than last year's WiFi 6E technology in the iPhone 15 models. Theoretically, the WiFi speeds jumped from 2.4 Gbps to 5.8 Gbps, but the performance gains should have been more pronounced in real-world usage. In the latest testing by Les Numeriques, it can be seen that the iPhone 16 models failed to deliver in terms of speed despite the WiFi 7 upgrade.

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The test was conducted using a TP-Link Deco BE85 mesh WiFi system, which revealed that the WiFi 7 performance on the iPhone 16 models is subpar. The iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Plus models were connected to a robust 6 GHz frequency band and a 10 Gbps network, but the results showed that the devices struggled to cross 1.6 to 1.7 Gbps. The publication noted that the results were more or less the same as the tests conducted with the iPhone 15 Pro Max last year, which featured WiFi 6E instead of WiFi 7.

Further investigation revealed that Apple has capped the potential of the WiFi 7. The devices should use the full 320 MHz channel width which is compatible with WiFi 7, but the devices have been capped at 160 MHz. This means that the true performance potential of the iPhone 16 models has been reduced by half. Apple's diagnostic tool confirmed that the WiFi 7 in the iPhone 16 is only taking advantage of