Apple iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max Feature ISRO-Developed NavIC GPS Navigation With A17 Pro Bionic Chip
Apple released the iPhone 15 Pro series with major performance upgrades and new camera features. But the company has also made a big change to its connectivity features, where you now have the Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) NavIC technology, which provides navigation support and is India’s own version of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which is run by the US government.
As you may know, NavIC is developed by ISRO, which has partnered with Qualcomm to integrate navigation technology into its mobile chipsets. But now the Indian space agency has managed to work with Apple on the new A17 Pro chipset and integrate the NavIC into the new iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max models, which is a big achievement overall.
When you browse the specifications of the iPhone 15 Pro models on Apple’s website, you will notice that in the location segment you have the usual suspects, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou and NavIC. It will be interesting to see if Apple will use the NavIC system for iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max users in India.
NavIC offers two types of positioning services – a standard positioning service and an encrypted service for security agencies and military access. The NavIC system is based on 7 satellites, of which 3 are geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellites and 4 are geosynchronous orbit (GSO) satellites. It has its own navigation system in India, which will work even when there are geopolitical tensions in the future. In addition, when the local system is in use, the accuracy of the navigation is definitely better.
Speaking of the new A17 Pro chip, Apple won’t bring it to the Pro versions until this year. The new chipset is manufactured using an industry-first 3nm process, and Apple claims it offers a 20 percent increase in GPU performance aimed at gamers. Apple also notes that more cores help the A17 Pro deliver better performance with higher efficiency. The new chip also manages to optimize the USB C port to offer data transfer speeds of up to 10 Gbps.
