Through UWB technology, iPhone can accurately find AirTag and locate the distance and direction. It sounds great, but the effective range of UWB connection is not far away. In practical use, this distance is only about 10 meter at most. Outside the signal range, you still have to control AirTag to make sound and find its location through Bluetooth connection.
Moreover, only iPhone 1 1 and 12 series equipped with U 1 chip can establish UWB connection with AirTag, and earlier iPhones can only search through Bluetooth signals.
As a wireless connection technology, UWB cannot replace Bluetooth. However, Apple is obviously deploying UWB at a deeper level. The Apple Watch Series 6 released last year is also equipped with U 1 chip. Until now, it has no UWB-related functions and cannot be used to find AirTag.
This practice is not "Apple". Apple rarely adds "dispensable" features to its products, let alone stuff unused technologies. What medicine does Apple, which values UWB so much, sell?
UWB is the abbreviation of ultra-wideband
Essentially, it is a communication protocol similar to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The difference is that UWB covers a wide frequency band, from 3. 1GHz to 10.6GHz, so it is called UWB. In contrast, the coverage frequency band of Bluetooth is only 2.402-2.480 GHz. Wi-Fi also has some very narrow channels, 2.4GHz and 5GHz respectively.
Of course, ultra-wideband coverage comes at a price. Compared with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, UWB can only transmit short "pulse signals" but not sine waves, and carry less information.
Any communication protocol is the result of trade-offs. The same is true for UWB, which sacrifices a certain bit rate and transmission distance in exchange for better anti-interference, faster connection speed and lower power consumption.
As early as 2002, UWB was approved by the Federal Communications Commission for civilian use. Previously, some people thought that UWB could become the standard protocol for the next generation data transmission, but it was difficult to balance the transmission distance, speed, power consumption and cost, which made it lose to Wi-Fi.
UWB emits "pulse signal", which makes it have two unique functional advantages-accurate positioning and extremely high security. These two characteristics make UWB suddenly have the possibility of revival after 20 years of silence.
UWB sends a very short pulse signal, which means that the signal that a device can send contains a "time stamp". After device B processes the signal and sends it back, device A can calculate how long the signal has been running in the air. Time multiplied by the speed of light equals the distance between two devices. This is similar to the principle of radar ranging.
At the same time, because the distance measured by UWB is extremely accurate, if multiple antennas are placed in the equipment, signals can be received through different antennas, the distance difference can be measured, and the direction of signals in space can be calculated. Ranging and orientation can realize accurate relative positioning.
In addition, the ultra-wideband pulse signal is extremely accurate in time domain, and it is almost impossible to be intercepted and tampered with. This makes it more secure and can be used for high-security connection authorization.
In the autumn of 20 19, Apple first installed a U 1 chip for UWB communication on iPhone 1 1.
Based on U 1 chip, Apple first provided an application scenario: directional transmission over airdrops. IPhone equipped with U 1 chip will try to establish UWB connection when sending every other air, so as to realize "which device the user points to, it will be recommended at the top", which is convenient for users to choose the object to transfer files. Of course, this function can only be realized between iPhone 1 1 and iPhone 12 equipped with U 1, and has nothing to do with iPad and Mac.
At present, the application scenarios of UWB, including AirTag, are still relatively narrow, and UWB only accounts for a small part of the airdrop and AirTag product experience.
After the release of AirTag, some users found that the year legally indicated in its manual was 20 19, which indicated that AirTag may have already completed its development and was originally intended to be released together with iPhone 1 1. Apple delayed the release of the UWB-enabled iPhone because it wanted to make it more popular.
At WWDC in 2020, Apple also opened the "near field interaction" function based on UWB to third-party developers. Developers can use this interface to realize real-time ranging and direction finding between iPhone. In the official introduction, Apple suggested that some small games can be developed based on this function, and demonstrated a somatosensory "pinball game".
Not only Apple, but also other manufacturers are trying to deploy UWB. Xiaomi put forward the "one-finger connection" function based on UWB in June+10 last year. By implanting UWB chips in mobile phones and smart homes, mobile phones can automatically detect when pointing to smart home devices, and pop up the control menu of devices, thus turning mobile phones into "smart remote controllers".
Because UWB connection has high security, it can also be used for all kinds of "unlocking" authorization, such as smart door locks, car locks and so on. At the 20 19 CES, Samsung released a smart door lock, which can be automatically unlocked by UWB function when family members walk within one meter of the door.
Apple has applied for a patent related to UWB car keys. In WWDC in 2020, Apple introduced the iPhone car key function. At present, car unlocking is based on NFC, and the mobile phone needs to be attached to the door handle of the car. If this function is extended to UWB in the future, users can automatically unlock cars without taking out their mobile phones. Compared with the current mainstream keyless entry scheme, the security will be greatly improved.
For Apple, the first thing to embrace UWB technology is to solve the "concrete" problem of airdropping and AirTag. But this industry also has bigger dreams.
Previously, the main application scene in UWB field was toB, which mainly provided high-precision indoor positioning for warehouses, factories and other scenes. This positioning scheme needs to lay a "positioning base station" indoors in advance, and then stick UWB tags similar to AirTag on the objects and people to be positioned, so as to realize accurate positioning of the target position.
Du Yanxing, CEO of Quanji Technology, who has worked in this field for many years, said in an interview with Geek Park that if future smartphones start to be equipped with UWB chips under the leadership of Apple, this indoor positioning solution will probably go out of the toB scene and start to enter the toC field. Many public places, such as shopping malls, can provide customers with accurate indoor navigation services by laying UWB positioning base stations.
It sounds a bit far away, but this is actually the direction that Apple is exploring. In 20 13, Apple introduced the iBeacon indoor positioning scheme based on low-power Bluetooth protocol, which is similar to UWB indoor positioning principle, but the communication protocol is different. Through iBeacon, retailers can provide users with indoor positioning and navigation services, and can also trigger some actions on the iPhone, such as automatically recommending to open an App and receiving some information about goods sold nearby.
IBeacon finally failed. On the one hand, the reason is that the positioning accuracy of Bluetooth is not enough, and the anti-interference ability in public places is not good enough; On the other hand, this usage scenario is still relatively weak, and it is not particularly hard.
It is hard to say whether Apple will revive iBeacon through UWB. However, UWB is already an important part of Apple's technology reserve and belongs to the positioning technology team. In Apple's hardware architecture, UWB can be used to determine location, establish connection and realize functions. It also needs to cooperate with Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, NFC and other technologies.
It's hard to say whether the failure of iBeacon was due to poor technology or the scene itself. The answer to this question determines whether Apple will revive iBeacon Apple with UWB.
Some people may be worried. Apple has always been a company that advocates "simplicity" and has a strict "technical aesthetic". Only when a technology can serve the function can it be added to the hardware. Will the layout of UWB in advance make the product more and more bloated and even lose the grasp of demand?
The answer to the question may not be technology. Just like airdrop and AirTag, they have complicated technical logic behind them, but from the user's point of view, they are extremely intuitive and concise to use. Today's smartphones are not like ten years ago. There is an obvious correspondence between technology and function. The light sensor is used to adjust the screen brightness, and the gravity sensor is used to adjust the screen direction.
Nowadays, there is no clear correspondence between many functions and technologies of smart phones. For example, Apple will judge whether the user is driving and turn on the driving mode by combining the strength change and induced acceleration of wireless signals such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Back to UWB, Apple maintained product restraint and did not add functions to AirTag. But there is no doubt that Apple continues to think about how to make better use of UWB technology.
This is the most anticipated part.
Author: Jesse
This article was originally published by GeekPark, please add GeekJun WeChat geekparker for reprinting.