Job’s Mob boasted it was faster than Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X75 and 30 per cent more efficient, yet industry analysts still rate Qualcomm’s kit as the clear performance leader.

Creative Strategies chief executive Ben Bajarin told CNBC that Apple’s silicon “may not be as good as Qualcomm’s yet, in terms of just overall throughput and performance,” effectively dismissing Apple’s claims.

The C1X is missing mmWave support, meaning the most expensive new iPhone is stuck on sub-6GHz while Snapdragon X80-equipped iPhones get the full-fat feature set.

A teardown showed every iPhone 17 except the Air still ships with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X80, highlighting Apple’s lack of faith in its modem. Qualcomm’s parts remain the only ones able to deliver headline-grabbing speeds, even if networks rarely live up to the marketing.

Apple is trying to paper over the cracks by talking up battery life, claiming 27 hours of video playback thanks to pairing the C1X with its N1 wireless chip. That might please users who spend their days streaming Netflix, but it is hardly an achievement when it comes at the cost of missing radio bands and weaker performance.

Apple’s modem plans remain half-baked. The company will still rely on Qualcomm for the next couple of years, with the licensing deal running until 2027. Rumours of a C2 with mmWave support suggest Apple knows it shipped the Air with compromised hardware. The longer-term plan to fold 5G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth into one package is still only on the drawing board.