Although the size of the gains varied across regions, the iPhone 17 was consistently faster. The improvements also seem disproportionally greater in areas with weak signal. That means the new iPhones with the N1 chip fare better in the worst conditions, than how the older iPhones with Qualcomm modems handled these environments.

The article is confusing Apple's N1 chip with their C1X chip. This is WiFi test, not 4G/5G. This means the N1 chip is faster than the Broadcom networking chip it replaced for WiFi.