Every time an Apple executive steps on to the stage for a company keynote new iOS powered devices are not that far behind, and the same was true for yesterday’s Apple Special Event, which broadcast from the Steve Jobs Theatre in Cupertino. The company unveiled new iterations of both the Apple watch and the iPhone X – the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max and the somewhat confusingly named (at least from the point of view of immersive technology) iPhone XR.
While the XR (pronounced “10 R”) is a budget model, and as mentioned, nothing expressly to do with XR, augmented reality (AR) and Apple’s ARKit 2 platform did come in to discussions for the power behind it and the two XS models, the chip that powers the device is the new A12 Bionic chip.
The A12 Bionic, which features 6.9 billion transistors, a combination of 4-core powered GPU, 6-core powered CPU and a Neural Engine comprised of 8 cores is the world’s first 7nm chip and according to Apple can do 5 trillion operations every second. The A12 Bionic allows the calibration of cameras for AR with accurate motion tracking with its gyro and accelerometer and low-light usage while delivering 60fps bringing with it machine learning.
“It’s a huge breakthrough.” Said Apple’s Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Philip W. Schiller as he introduced the chip. “This A12 Bionic is, without question, the smartest and most powerful chip ever in a smartphone. So much of the experience we have with iPhone is driven by this chip and it’s going to enable us to have so many great new experiences not possible before.”
The expanded screen for the new iPhone X models, has, according to Senior Director of iPhone Product Marketing Kaiann Drance. “turned into a wonderful window to these new AR experiences,” adding that “iPhone XS is the best platform for AR.”
The A12 Bionic looks set to power a new range of deeper and more enhanced AR apps created in ARKit 2, Apple demonstrating the AR Quicklook feature and even namedropping AR app Measure, which first appeared earlier this year at WWDC 18.
We can expect a new wave of these enhanced experiences to start dropping after release and VRFocus will let you know when we have news on any of them. For more AR news you can find a link to everything on the site under ‘More’ on the top shortcut bar. Alternatively click here to go directly.