The iPhone 12 has long been expected to be Apple's first 5G-enabled device, and we thought we knew the modem that would make it possible. However, a new report from Digitimes claims that the new iPhone will feature a faster and more efficient modem than originally rumored, which could give Apple a significant advantage over Android phones like the Galaxy Note 20.

The iPhone 12 was initially said to use a Snapdragon X55 modem, as suggested by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo and other sources, but according to Digitimes, Apple's next handset will instead use Snapdragon X60 silicon for the first time TSMC is reportedly tasked with manufacturing both the chip and the iPhone 12's A14 Bionic processor.

Both the Snapdragon X60 and A14 Bionic are 5-nanometer chips and are more power efficient than the 7nm chipsets found in most recent flagship phones. The big 5G advantage of the Snapdragon X60 over Qualcomm's current X55 modem is the ability to aggregate signals from sub-6GHz and millimeter wave sources at once, which improves overall performance and, as MacRumors notes, allows the network's optimal and most available resources, allowing data to flow dynamically.

What makes the DigiTimes report interesting is that virtually every source has so far linked the X55 to the iPhone 12 series. It is possible that these sources were wrong, but given the way rumors circulate, it is more likely that this information will never actually materialize and the X60 will not appear until the iPhone 13 in 2021.

All four iPhone 12 models are expected to connect to 5G networks, but only the Pro model will have access to mmWave 5G. mmWave 5G is the fastest of the 5G infrastructure, offering speeds of 1 Gbps to 2 Gbps, but the small cells that project the signal It is limited to short distances where you can access the small cells projecting the signal at line-of-sight.

5G, which you will probably rely on most often, is in the sub-6GHz band and, like the LTE we are familiar with today, offers slower speeds, albeit over exponentially greater distances.

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note 20, like the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, is another phone that offers sub-6GHz band and millimeter wave 5G connectivity, but requires the use of Qualcomm's X55 modem The X55 occupies a larger footprint, making the X60 Without the aggregation technology that makes it attractive, 5G performance in Samsung's new phablet could take a bigger hit on battery life than in Apple's phone.

If we see more and more X60s popping up in iPhone 12 rumors in the coming weeks and months, it will mean that the Digitimes report was genuine. At this point, however, it is still a little too early to tell.