Thanks to iOS 16, third-party accessories integrating an Ultra Wide Band module will be able to communicate with the U1 chip of the iPhone. They will then be able to perform certain actions automatically as soon as your iPhone is near.
iOS 16 should open up a highway of new features to third-party accessory makers. Apple announced at WWDC that the future iPhone operating system would offer new background interaction features. The goal of this move is to allow third-party accessories to communicate with the iPhone by taking advantage of the capabilities offered by the U1 chip. In other words, thanks to iOS 16, compatible accessories will be able to automatically launch certain actions as soon as they detect your iPhone nearby, even if the application attached to the accessory is not open.
If few details were known for the moment, we now know a little more thanks to the press release published by the manufacturer Qorvo, which was spotted by MacRumors. Specializing in the manufacture of radio frequency systems for wireless devices, Qorvo reveals that it has obtained MFi (Made For iPhone) certification. This means that its Ultra Wide Band chips will have perfect interoperability with Apple’s U1 chip integrated into iPhones and Apple Watches. As a result, accessories that will embed a module manufactured by Qorvo will be able to use Apple’s Nearby Interaction protocol, and thus exploit the localization capabilities of the U1 chip.
Apple’s U1 chip, found in iPhone 11 and newer, Apple Watch 6 and later, and HomePod Mini and AirTags, relies on Ultra Wide Band technology to accurately locate other nearby devices.
With the new background interaction feature in iOS 16, accessory manufacturers will be able to imagine and push new uses for their devices. It would thus be possible to configure them to trigger, in the background, actions in real time as soon as a device carrying a U1 chip is detected in a nearby environment. Theoretically, this could allow you to generate completely transparent routines to, for example, automatically turn on the light when you enter a room, or even close the shutters when you leave your home.
Source :
MacRumors