Apple’s self-developed baseband chip malfunctions: iPhone Air suffers hardware failure

Fast Technology reported that an iPhone Air user recently posted publicly claiming that Apple’s self-developed baseband chip has a hardware malfunction, rendering their phone unable to make calls.

A user named itstheskylion posted on Reddit that their iPhone Air suddenly lost cellular signal despite being in a case the entire time and having not been dropped.

As a milestone product for Apple in breaking free from its dependence on Qualcomm, the iPhone Air was the first to be equipped with Apple’s self-developed C1X 5G baseband.

According to the netizens mentioned above, after discovering that the signal had disappeared, they tried conventional methods such as restarting the device, performing a soft reset, and restoring network settings, but none of these methods could restore the cellular connection.

In addition, the device uses a dual-carrier dual-SIM configuration, and neither SIM card can connect to the network normally, ruling out the possibility of carrier network outages or specific network failures.

itstheskylion conducted an in-depth investigation using the “Mobile Service Diagnosis” interface within the system, and the system clearly determined that the C1X baseband had experienced a hardware failure.

This means that this is not a simple software lag, but rather that the chip itself may have been damaged (commonly known as “bricked”). Considering that the probability of physical damage to the baseband chip in modern smartphones is extremely low, this case quickly attracted great attention in the tech community.

As of press time, Apple has not given any response.