This speedy data tech will be in your next flagship phone
Revealed during MWC 2025, the X85 is the latest in Qualcomm's long line of phone modems that appear in most high-end phones
Qualcomm has revealed the hardware that’ll bring even faster data speeds to your next flaghip phone.
Revealed during MWC 2025, the X85 is the latest in Qualcomm’s long line of phone modems that appear in most high-end phones including Apple’s iPhone 16 and Samsung Galaxy S25 series handsets. It’ll be in phones launching in the second half of the year.
Providing the network is able to cope with it, the X85 offers download speeds of up to 11Gbps and upload speeds of 3.7Gbps which is pretty tasty to say the least.
After the iPhone 16e used an Apple-designed modem inside it, there was a lot of speculation that Apple will use its own modem inside the iPhone 17.
However, the rumours point towards Apple sticking with Qualcomm for its high-end flagship this year, with subsequent models getting an Apple-designed modem instead. Apple has been working on designing its own modems for the best part of a decade.
Continuing with Qualcomm hardware for the iPhone 17 could be because Apple’s modem only supports a part of 5G at present, the sub-6Ghz frequencies.
US versions of the flagship iPhones have supported mmWave tech (aka the models without a physical SIM tray), which essentially is shorter range (hence the mm indicating the size of the waves) but with much higher bandwidth.
Other global iPhone 16 models don’t yet support mmWave (and have a physical SIM tray as well as eSIM support).
Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
