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I was wondering if the iPhone 8, given its' alleged support for "Advanced LTE", has a better cellular modem than the 7. Recall that the 7 had its cell phone data speeds restricted because Apple used both Intel and Qualcomm modems, and the Intel modems were not as fast. So what is the story with the 8?

Well this is highly un-scientific, as there is no way to know for sure how busy the phone was during these tests, but I ran tests with my iPhone 7 the other day (from the same physical location) and the iPhone 8 this morning (assuming it has settled down from all the stuff it does as a new phone over the last few days). To me it seems to me one could conclude that the cell modem is faster in the 8, that they have gotten a little more out of it with a different model maybe. I ran 5 tests with each phone using the Speedtest app, connected to the same server every time.

iPhone 7 download:
highest speed: 55.85 mbps
mean: 48.80
median: 46.83
lowest: 40.98

iPhone 8 download:
highest: 70.76 mbps
mean: 62.56
median: 63.03
lowest: 56.53

iPhone 7 upload:
highest: 13.90 mbps
mean: 12.33
median: 12.31
lowest: 11.15

iPhone 8 upload:
highest: 15.30 mbps
mean: 13.80
median: 14.16
lowest: 12.32