My guess is that it's much more than this. It's for augmenting the GPS location with dead-reckoning, for places where the GPS location doesn't reach well, such as buildings or on subways, etc.
Accelerometers are already pretty sensitive - enough to provide an improvement on GPS-only devices. But, this new coprocessor will allow a much higher-resolution sampling of the accelerometer, and thus the integration (in the calclus sense) of acceleration into velocity and distance will be much more precise.
Motion sensors themselves are really energy-cheap but the main CPU needs to be on to sample them, which basically means that if you want continuous mobility detection you're going to burn through your battery pretty quickly, which is why it isn't used much. You can do some CPU duty-cycling, but wake-up and suspend overhead is pretty bad and can amount to as much as 50% of the total energy spent. I haven't done any measurements on an iPhone, but a GS2 Exynos 4 is a terrible energy drain, while an something like an OMAP 4460 (e.g. Galaxy Nexus) is much more efficient.
By offloading mobility detection to a separate chip you can bring down the overhead to tens of mW. The fact that you can use it as a step counter for jogging is just icing on the cake :)
It's a coprocessor not a sensor, so it may operate independently of the CPU as far as continuously sampling the motion sensors is concerned. Presumably that requires much less power to do so.
Of course it will used to augment/supplement GPS.
Which one will have a higher profit margin for Apple? The 5C.
But what is relatively assured is that it will have substantially higher margins than the equivalent in their old strategy, a price reduced 5.
So it's quite likely that the introduction of the 5C will increase Apple's overall margins rather than decreasing it, as everybody expected.
http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/coolpix/s/s6500/
16MP, 12x optical zoom, upto ISO3200, Lens shift VR
The only good thing is f/2.2 which the Lumia 1020 has and is a better camera, 32Gb of built in storage (and SD card slot) for £200 GBP LESS than the 5s.
Apple are rip off merchants. Sorry.
Today the feature of not being a second device outweighs almost any other camera feature.
// I love photography, have top of the line Nikon pro gear, but the iPhone 4S ruined my enjoyment of lugging that gear around. This summer I picked up a Sony RX1 which is an astonishing full frame sensor in an amazingly compact body to solve that, figuring I'd be willing to carry something small, and that, frankly, the cost would compel me. But truth is, with the iPhone 4S, pictures of everyday things are "good enough" that the inconvenience of the second device still has me leaving it at home. Convenience is a compelling feature!
Yeah, and it's just a camera.
Someone smart once said "the best camera is the one you have with you", which adds immensely to the value of having a good camera on something you carry all day long.
However, comparing a $600 iPhone to a $70 point-and-shoot is not really relevant.
sometimes you are downvoted. it happens.
but more often than not someone upvotes you again, and then it just look whiny, espescially if you are second comment on the page (as you are now).
It's the same reason why, if there was a $20 Facebook device, a $20 Twitter device, a $20 SMS device, etc., they wouldn't sell very well since the phones people already carry can do those things without needing to purchase and tote around multiple other devices.
Many of the Micro 4/3s and higher end P&S like Sony RX100 are relatively pricey and could find the iPhone snapping at their heels. The difference in quality could easily be acceptable given the benefits of an internet connected device e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Flickr.
My friend brought a cheap point-and-shoot camera to last New Years Party. He had pictures from a family get-together with kids throwing leaves up in the air, taking multiple snapshots during. With the fast shutter mode, you could see individual leaves and zoom in on them. I'm certain the iPhone 5 nor any other camera phone cannot come even remotely close to that.
Then there's the low light pictures I tested during the party. None of the cameraphones could get a decent shot, but the point-and-shoot was amazing.
Sure, if you take pictures in ideal conditions with a cameraphone, it starts to get hard to tell, but the reality is most pictures are taken with low lighting, or too much motion, and I've yet to see a single cameraphone be even minimally useable in these conditions.
It's not going to replace good cameras used by enthusiasts who know their aperture from their ISO, but it has the potential to make huge waves in the snapshot category. I'd love to see that tech make its way to, say, the successor to the Canon S110 or the next Ricoh GRD.
It will make auto white balance so much better at its job.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3017050/untold-stories-inside-ap...
They let companies like Apple, Samsung etc come in and dominate what was their industry to own.
Hard back-pedalling on plastic observed.
1. If it's intended to be appealing, why call it "5 Cheap"? Okay, Apple didn't call it "5 Cheap", but everyone thinks so, and in marketing, what consumers think is the truth. Additionally, Apple didn't try to correct people when everyone thought it would be cheap. Who is gonna buy a phone that is "cheap" but not cost effective?
2. The 5C isn't that appealing against 5. Yes, a new product is a new prodcut, but a flagship is a flagship. In emerging markets, why do people spend a month's salary for a phone? Because they want to show off to ohters, or at least so that people can't show off to them. Which one do you think have more "show off" power? The previous year's flagship (people don't know when you bought it) that looks identical to this year's flagship, or the "cheap" alternative?
3. The colorful back is suitable for really cheap devices, not seemingly cheap but actually expensive ones. They are liked by young people, mostly students, and new graduates. They don't have much money, and prefer cheaper devices. The 5C isn't cheap. Premium products are never colorful, for a reason.
4. The 5C is a worse product than the 5, technically. It probably has only about 10% larger battery capacity, but is 18% thicker and heavier. I can imagine how many cheap materials are used to make that happen.
5. If you look at the big picture, the trend is smaller and smaller differences between generations of iPhones. And because of the diminishing differences, people are more and more likely to choose an older generation for a cheaper price. According to one source[1], the 4S commanded 90% of all iPhone sales immediately after launch, and almost 75% a year later, before the 5 was launched. The numbers are 70% and 50% for the 5. Unfortunately, the difference between 5S and 5 is far smaller than that between 5 and 4S. Therefore, the appeal of the 5, if it were not discontinued, would only surpass that of the 4S in the past year, and maybe even able to seriously challenge the 5S in sales. The problem of the middle tier is not that it's not appealing, it's maybe that it's too appealing, making the flagship device not able to stand out. Maybe Apple acted this turn not by improving the quality of the flagship (they can't), but by lowering the quality of the middle tier.
6. If the 5C could generate similar earnings per unit as the 5S, why is it bad for Apple if it eats too much into the 5S's market? Because the success of the flagship relates closely to Apple's brand image, and Apple's success is closely tied to its image. People don't care about the middle tier, the success of the flagship is what reflects the company's technical prowess, and this is a battlefield in which Apple can't afford to lose.
I guess the sales numbers will tell who is right:), whether the 5C performs better than the 4S did in the last turn.
[1] http://macdailynews.com/2013/07/22/iphone-5-accounts-for-hal...
The Chinese mass market is dominated by extremely poor bargain bucket Android devices with invisibly thin margins that can barely scroll a web page. It is true that Samsung has a strong presence over there and Apple needs to deal with that, but the premium end of the market is big enough for both to do well. The kind of people who are likely to prefer an iPhone over there aren't as price sensitive as the average and charging them less just to also sell a few more units down market would just be leaving money on the table. That's not something Apple has a habit of doing.
Rather boringly I suspect the C stands for colour (or color if you must).
1. The spec published today is not suggesting that iPhone 5c/s would support TD-SCDMA networks which CMCC is bound to due to regulation reasons. And LTE-TDD is light year ahead for CMCC.
2. A difference of mere 800 CNY in price between 5c and 5s is not attractive enough to those who can afford 5,000+ CNY(, i.e. the iPhone 5s) in China. And in the past, smugglers carrying duty-free iPhones from Hong Kong in the first few months of sales may reduce the high price caused by the tariff and VAT. Now, Hong Kong is NOT even in the initial list!
2. I agree. The 5C occupies no interesting niche in the Chinese market beyond its unique styling. Besides, the yellow one looks too much like a xiaomi to be attractive.
