Tech giant Apple on Tuesday officially unveiled its new high-end iPhones: the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max. The frame on the Pro models has a brushed look, as opposed to the shiny, stainless steel frame on last year’s models. Not only is titanium cool looking, it’s also more durable while making the phones slightly lighter. The displays are the same size: 6.1 and 6.7 inches.
However when one goes at the specifications of the iPhone 15 series , one can see that Apple has Precision dual-frequency GPS (GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou and NavIC) Digital compass Wi-Fi Cellular,iBeacon micro-location. It is the NavIC which is developed by Indian Space Research Organisation(ISRO).
What is NavIC?
To meet the positioning, navigation and timing requirements of the nation, ISRO has established a regional navigation satellite system called Navigation with Indian Constellation (NavIC). NavIC was erstwhile known as Indian Regional Navigation Satellite System (IRNSS).
NavIC is designed with a constellation of 7 satellites and a network of ground stations operating 24 x 7. Three satellites of the constellation are placed in geostationary orbit, at 32.5°E, 83°E and 129.5°E respectively, and four satellites are placed in inclined geosynchronous orbit with equatorial crossing of 55°E and 111.75°E respectively, with inclination of 29° (two satellites in each plane). The ground network consists of control centre, precise timing facility, range and integrity monitoring stations, two-way ranging stations, etc.
NavIC offers two services: Standard Position Service (SPS) for civilian users and Restricted Service (RS) for strategic users. These two services are provided in both L5 (1176.45 MHz) and S band (2498.028 MHz). NavIC coverage area includes India and a region up to 1500 km beyond Indian boundary. NavIC signals are designed to provide user position accuracy better than 20m (2) and timing accuracy better than 50ns (2).NavIC SPS signals are interoperable with the other global navigation satellite system (GNSS) signals namely GPS, Glonass, Galileo and BeiDou.
Interestingly, the ring/silent switch is gone, replaced with an “Action Button”. With the new, button that you can customize to run shortcuts, bring up accessibility features, open the camera, turn on the flashlight, and more.
The Pros both have Super Retina XDR displays with ProMotion and support both the always-on display and the new StandBy mode in iOS 17.
The chip that powers the iPhone 15 Pro is Apple’s new A17 Pro chip. It’s a 3 nanometer chip, with 19 billion transistors, 6 main cores (2 performance cores and 4 efficiency cores), and the 16-core Neural Engine.
Camera functions have been improved. On the iPhone 15 Pro Max (but not the regular iPhone 15 Pro), there’s a new telephoto camera, with a new tetra-prism design, increasing the zoom up to 5x (the iPhone 15 Pro maxes out at 3x).
But the main, wide camera, as well as the ultrawide camera (which are the same on both the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max) have received significant improvements as well.
Most importantly, the camera can now capture Spatial Video, which is designed to be watched on Apple’s upcoming Vision Pro, though that’s coming later this year.
The starting price for the iPhone 15 Pro is same as last year, USD 999. For the iPhone 15 pro Max, it’s USD 100 higher at USD 1,199, though it now starts with double the storage, 256GB.
*with Agency Inputs
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Updated: 13 Sep 2023, 08:52 PM IST
