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5G Antenna’s Don’t Fit iPhone Design Criteria
February 23, 2020
Essential to realizing the potential of 5G is the inclusion of multiple antenna systems to exploit smart beamforming for high data rate transmissions in the high bandwidth mm-wave frequency bands, and massive MIMO in the 1-7 GHz "mid-band" frequency range. Recent reports claim that Apple is trying to shrink its reliance on Qualcomm and build its own in-phone 5G antenna. The company is apparently unimpressed by the size of Qualcomm's latest antenna, the QTM525. This mmWave 5G-accessing antenna is seemingly a bit too large for Apple's increasingly slimline phones. As such, Apple is supposedly making its own antenna to access mmWave 5G networking, a faster band of 5G Apple appears to be opting to build the antenna itself - ensuring that it doesn't have to design the next iPhone models around a third-party equivalent. That keeps the design decisions in its own hands. However, Apple has had a checkered past with antennas - remember Antennagate, when the antenna in the iPhone 4 only worked effectively when the phone was held in a particular way. 5G millimeter wave antennas notoriously can suffer from an even more pronounced version of the same problem. That’s the reason Qualcomm generally recommends the strategic mounting of multiple antennas at a phone’s edges, guaranteeing that at least one will be exposed during normal use. The smallest antenna module Qualcomm sells is the QTM525, which promises to work in devices in the 8mm thickness range — a point that was on display with Samsung’s announcement of the 7.8mm thick Galaxy S20+, which is just barely large enough to use that antenna. Samsung conspicuously left millimeter wave out of the slightly smaller Galaxy S20, possibly awaiting a smaller antenna. Apple is back on an iPhone thinness kick, so the QTM525 is too big. There’s evidence that it’s doing so with rival Broadcom. Depending on when they started, it’s questionable whether Apple is in a to make its own antennas for 5G iPhones — or that it’s still wrestling at this very late stage with substantially different design alternatives. That would leave the company with half a year to finalize and manufacture all the hardware it needs for what’s been predicted to be a supercycle iPhone launch, feeding pent-up global demand for substantial cosmetic and internal hardware redesigns. Half a year would be cutting things close: If manufacturing started late, that might be enough to restrict initial supplies of the affected iPhones and possibly create the sort of regional and model-specific availability challenges we haven’t seen in some time. And that’s assuming there’s no last-minute or post-launch snafu with antenna performance. As today’s report points out, all it would take is some undiscovered glitch in design or manufacturing to mess up 5G performance, seriously undercutting the iPhone’s speed and parity compared with Android rivals.
5G Antenna’s Don’t Fit iPhone Design Criteria
February 23, 2020
Essential to realizing the potential of 5G is the inclusion of multiple antenna systems to exploit smart beamforming for high data rate transmissions in the high bandwidth mm-wave frequency bands, and massive MIMO in the 1-7 GHz "mid-band" frequency range. Recent reports claim that Apple is trying to shrink its reliance on Qualcomm and build its own in-phone 5G antenna. The company is apparently unimpressed by the size of Qualcomm's latest antenna, the QTM525. This mmWave 5G-accessing antenna is seemingly a bit too large for Apple's increasingly slimline phones. As such, Apple is supposedly making its own antenna to access mmWave 5G networking, a faster band of 5G Apple appears to be opting to build the antenna itself - ensuring that it doesn't have to design the next iPhone models around a third-party equivalent. That keeps the design decisions in its own hands. However, Apple has had a checkered past with antennas - remember Antennagate, when the antenna in the iPhone 4 only worked effectively when the phone was held in a particular way. 5G millimeter wave antennas notoriously can suffer from an even more pronounced version of the same problem. That’s the reason Qualcomm generally recommends the strategic mounting of multiple antennas at a phone’s edges, guaranteeing that at least one will be exposed during normal use. The smallest antenna module Qualcomm sells is the QTM525, which promises to work in devices in the 8mm thickness range — a point that was on display with Samsung’s announcement of the 7.8mm thick Galaxy S20+, which is just barely large enough to use that antenna. Samsung conspicuously left millimeter wave out of the slightly smaller Galaxy S20, possibly awaiting a smaller antenna. Apple is back on an iPhone thinness kick, so the QTM525 is too big. There’s evidence that it’s doing so with rival Broadcom. Depending on when they started, it’s questionable whether Apple is in a to make its own antennas for 5G iPhones — or that it’s still wrestling at this very late stage with substantially different design alternatives. That would leave the company with half a year to finalize and manufacture all the hardware it needs for what’s been predicted to be a supercycle iPhone launch, feeding pent-up global demand for substantial cosmetic and internal hardware redesigns. Half a year would be cutting things close: If manufacturing started late, that might be enough to restrict initial supplies of the affected iPhones and possibly create the sort of regional and model-specific availability challenges we haven’t seen in some time. And that’s assuming there’s no last-minute or post-launch snafu with antenna performance. As today’s report points out, all it would take is some undiscovered glitch in design or manufacturing to mess up 5G performance, seriously undercutting the iPhone’s speed and parity compared with Android rivals.
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