Ookla has found that Apple’s custom N1 networking chip that integrates the Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 6, and Thread radios in the iPhone 17 family “delivers a clear step-change in real-world Wi-Fi performance” when compared to the Broadcom chip used in the iPhone 16 models. In North America, the iPhone 17 family also outperformed flagship Android phones when it came to Wi-Fi download speeds during the same time period.

On paper, the N1 chip’s Wi-Fi capabilities appear “virtually identical to its Broadcom-based predecessor” in the iPhone 16, according to Ookla. The N1 is also limited to 160MHz channels and doesn’t take full advantage of Wi-Fi 7’s faster 320MHz channels, but for real world users that limitation didn’t have a significant impact.

Using Speedtest Intelligence data gathered during the

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