Apple introduced its first in-house cellular modem, the C1, last week with the announcement of the not-so-budget iPhone 16e, and while it didn’t get into too much detail about it, the company reportedly has some big plans for future iterations. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, “Apple intends to eventually meld the modem component into the main processor.” Integrating the modem into the main processor could have energy and cost benefits, but that design is still a ways off. We’ll likely see the C2 and C3 without it first, which the company is already testing according to Gurman, and the integrated design won’t follow until “2028 at the earliest

During its unveiling, Apple called the new C1 modem its “most power-efficient modem ever in an iPhone.” The $599 iPhone 16e also has an A18 chip (but with four GPU cores) and supports Apple Intelligence, even if that’s not what people actually wanted out of it.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/mobile/smartphones/apple-reportedly-plans-to-combine-its-modem-with-future-processors-as-a-single-package-225159519.html?src=rss