“Apple has a new trick up its sleeve with the iPhone 5s that was talked about on stage during its recent reveal event, but the impact of which won’t be felt until much later when it gets fully taken advantage of by third-party developers,” Darrell Etherington writes for TechCrunch.
“Specifically, I’m talking about the M7 motion coprocessor that now takes the load of tracking motion and distance covered, requiring much less battery draw and enabling some neat new tricks with tremendous felt impact,” Etherington writes. “The M7 is already a boon to the iPhone 5s without any third-party app support – it makes the iPhone more intelligent in terms of when to activate certain features and when to slow things down and conserve battery life by checking less frequently for open networks, for instance. Because it’s already more efficient than using the main A-series processor for these tasks, and because changing these behaviours can themselves also save battery, the M7 already stretches the built-in battery to its upper limits.”
Etherington writes, “So in the future, we’ll likely see gesture-controlled games (imagine the iPhone acting as a gesture controller for a title broadcast to Apple TV via AirPlay), as well as all kinds of fitness trackers and apps that can use CoreMotion to limit battery drain or change functionality entirely depending on where and when they’re being used, as detected by motion cues. An app might offer very different modes while in transit, for instance, vs. when it’s stationary in the home.”
Read more in the full article here.
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How Apple’s unmatched A7 64-bit processor gives iOS plenty of headroom for the future and Apple a distinct competitive advantage – September 16, 2013
Apple seen seeding future wearable products in iPhone 5s with M7 motion co-processor – September 16, 2013
Fitness gadget makers should be very afraid: Apple’s M7 chip, built into iPhone 5s, paves the way for iWatch – September 13, 2013