A teardown analysis has reportedly revealed that the Apple iPhone 14 uses a Qualcomm satellite chip, but with additional components customized by Apple in order to implement the phone’s most important new features.
Satellite communications is an important new feature of iPhone 14, allowing emergency messages to be sent when WiFi and cellular data networks are unavailable.
Apple said earlier this month that iPhone 14 includes new hardware to enable this emergency messaging service. Apple plans to enable the service in a software update in November. But the company didn’t disclose details of the hardware associated with it.
An iFixit teardown of the iPhone 14 Pro Max on Friday revealed that the phone is powered by a Qualcomm X65 modem chip.
The Qualcomm chip provides 5G cellular connectivity for this phone, but can also call on the Band n53 frequency used by Globalstar’s satellites.
Globalstar struck a deal with Apple earlier this month for the latter to use 85 percent of the communications capacity of its satellite network in order to enable the iPhone’s latest emergency communications feature.
Apple said in a statement that the company did use additional proprietary hardware and software in iPhone 14 to implement the new messaging feature.
Apple said, “iPhone 14 includes custom band components and new software designed entirely by Apple that work together to enable emergency SOS communications with the new iPhone 14 models.”
Qualcomm has not yet commented.
