A new report from Opensignal paints a rough picture of how the performance of 5G on the iPhone 12 series compares to Android smartphones in the US. The majority of the top 25 fastest 5G smartphones were eventually manufactured by Samsung and while iPhone 12 sees a 2.3x jump in 5G speeds compared to its 4G iPhone speeds, Apple’s first 5G iPhones are at the bottom of the package and placed behind at least 25. Android smartphones for overall download speed.
Opensignal today shared the new report on 5G performance in the US by smartphone model with Samsung’s new Galaxy S21 5G peaking with an average 5G / 4G download speed of 56 Mbps.
One of the big takeaways was Samsung which makes up 60% of the top 25 5G artists.
TCL’s Revvl 5G and the OnePlus 8T + took second and third place respectively with an average of 49.8 and 49.3 Mbps. LG’s Velvet 5G came 25th with 37.8 Mbps.
Where’s the iPhone 12 in all this? Undoubtedly disappointing for iPhone 12 owners, Apple’s first 5G-enabled smartphones came behind their Android competitors for overall 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 at 29.6 and 32.9 Mbps respectively.
Opensignal notes that because previous iPhones were behind Android in terms of 4G speeds with Intel instead of Qualcomm modems, iPhone 12 saw a larger 2.3x increase in 5G versus 4G speeds in the US than competitors like Samsung , OnePlus, etc. jump to 5G.
The chart below shows how Apple was able to close the gap in 5G performance with Qualcomm modems, but it still lags behind all Android competitors.
Since the iPhone 12 series uses Qualcomm 5G modems like Android devices and even includes mmWave in all the models, we were curious as to why the iPhone seems to be lagging behind and has reached out to Opensignal.
Ian Fogg, who wrote the report and is leading the lead on Opensignal’s analysis team, said it may mean that Samsung and other Android manufacturers are ahead of Apple when it comes to RF design, as smartphone components outside the modem 5G / 4G performance affected. Samsung’s Galaxy S21, for example, is its third-generation 5G smartphone, while the iPhone 12 series is Apple’s first. Apple may therefore have work to do to catch up with the RF design at the forefront.
Finally, the report emphasizes that when 5G comes to iPad, it should make a good difference for users:
Today we see the average download speed on the 5G iPhone Pro models being on average 36% faster than the speeds on the latest mobile iPad Pro models. With a new 5C-functional SoC, future iPad Pro users should see speed at least as fast as iPhone 12 users.
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