With the release of Apple's iPhone 16, this technology will finally become more widespread.
Apple announced its iPhone 16 yesterday and the manufacturer is including WiFi 7 in one of its products for the first time. The 802.11be wireless standard, commercially known as WiFi 7, was ratified at the beginning of the year and is used by many manufacturers who did not wait for its officialization to offer compatible products.
In France, we are probably one of the countries with the highest adoption, notably thanks to Free which offers a Freebox Ultra compatible with WiFi 7.
The release of the iPhone 16 should launch for good the wireless standard that has been struggling to take off. Historical internet service providers will now have an additional argument to add WiFi 7 to their box.
What are the wifi 7 speeds for iPhones?
Apple specifies that the iPhone 16 supports WiFi 7 (802.11be) with 2×2 MIMO, which means that the iPhone 16 has a maximum theoretical speed of 5.8 Gb/s in WiFi 7 compared to 2.4 Gb/s for WiFi 6E if all the new features of the number are supported: 320 MHz frequency bands and 4K QAM modulation.
In practice, the iPhone 16 should be able to exceed 4 Gb/s in practice as we noted during the WiFi 7 tests of the TP-Link Mesh Deco BE85 packs and the Netgear Orbi 970. This corresponds to transfers reaching speeds of around 500 MB/s, enough to download your applications or transfer your videos in a few seconds. Let's remember that to take advantage of the speeds supported by WiFi 7, particularly for downloads, you will need a fiber plan offering high speeds and a router or box capable of supporting the standard.
Perfect for video gaming
Let's also remember that WiFi 7 doesn't just bring higher speeds compared to WiFi 6E. The MLO (Multi-Link Operation), Puncturing and Multiple RU options allow latency to be drastically reduced compared to the previous standard. Latency can be reduced by up to 85%, allowing for more responsive web surfing or improved reaction time in games.
The support for WiFi 7 by Apple's iPhone 16 is excellent news for the standard which will finally see its adoption cycle accelerate.
