Does iPhone 16 support 320 MHz channel width in the 6 GHz Wi-Fi band?

All iPhone 16 models support tri-band Wi-Fi 7 as you might have seen here. But what is the maximum channel width they support in the 6 GHz band?

iPhone 16

Although my Wi-Fi 7 access point uses 320 MHz wide channel, the maximum 6 GHz channel width iPhone 16 supports is 160 MHz.

AP using 320 MHz wide channel

Here is the client view of the world.

iOS Wi-Fi Diagnostics profile provides extra information

Spectrum view

I am using Oscium WiPry Clarity 6 GHz spectrum analyser to see the spectrum. When we run a WAN speed tool Speedtest.net (it is not designed to be a Wi-Fi test tool) to generate some traffic here and see how it utilizes the 160 MHz channel.

Outside of that, I also checked the 2.4 GHz channel. There was no activity there. So that proves that only one of the 2 bands involved in MLO is active at a time.

Only the 6 GHz channel is active during data transfer, 2.4 GHz isn’t actively used

Updated: Apple’s iPhone 16 Wi-Fi specification

New documentation is now available directly from Apple. Note that 160 MHz is the maximum channel width for all models.

iPhone 16 Wi-Fi specification published by Apple

You normally won’t use 320 MHz wide channel anyway in Europe

Having said that, at least in Europe, we only have one 320 MHz wide channel available. So by the time you add a second access point you will have to downgrade to 160 MHz channels or narrower. That is to prevent the 2 APs from stepping on each other’s toes and causing adjacent channel interference. No support for 320 MHz channel width on the iPhone is not really a problem.

If you were considering using 320 MHz channels, or if your vendor uses that as a factory default setting, please be a good citizen and don’t.

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Jiri Brejcha

Jiri is passionate about mobility ranging from Wi-Fi to folding bikes;-) He is a Wi-Fi Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco UK, proud member of the Cisco Live Network Operations Center deployment team, and WLAN Pi development team. If he is not working, he is most likely riding his Brompton bike. All opinions are my own, not Cisco's.

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