Apple watch keeps time 4x more accurate than iPhone, detailed Kevin Lynch, Vice President of Technology of Apple
The Apple Watch is a smartwatch, so that means it can do a lot of things. But one of the elements that Apple is most proud of, and the thing that should count the most for a watch, is how accurate it is in telling you what time it is.
Now that the wearable has been on the market for a few months now, and as the clocks inexorably tick closer to a brand new year, Mashable took some time to talk to Apple’s Kevin Lynch, who is the Vice President of Technology at the company and has been working on the Apple Watch ever since joining the ranks. In the sit-down, Lynch detailed the power of the Watch’s ability to keep time, and even compared it to the time-keeping abilities of the iPhone.
For those who might have forgotten, Apple has marketed the Apple Watch as an incredibly accurate timepiece, going as far as to say that the device “keeps time to within 50 milliseconds of the definitive global time standard.” On a broad scale, that’s good news. But when working in the watch industry, it’s a gold star compared to some mechanical watches, including those in the high-end market, that need to be adjusted on occasion.
To get there, Lynch described that there’s a lot of work that’s needed. That includes a network of time servers that exist, apparently, solely to keep the most accurate time. Those networks are also connected to GPS satellites which all get their time from the U.S. Naval Observatory.
“First of all, we’ve curated our own network time servers around the world,” said Lynch. There are, by his count, 15 such “Stratum One”-level Network Time Servers (NTP) (one level down from an atomic clock), scattered around the world. They’re all housed in buildings with GPS antennas on the roof that talk, you guessed it, to GPS satellites orbiting the earth, which all get their time information from the U.S. Naval Observatory. In other words, those satellites are all getting their times from one, big orbiting system.”
On top of that, Apple uses high-speed cameras that watch the Watch to keep tabs on the wearable’s second hand, to make sure that there isn’t any latency as it ticks around the digital watch face. All in a tireless effort to make sure that the Apple Watch is the most accurate it can be.
“Through the whole stack, we’ve really paid attention to the accuracy,” Lynch said, adding that Apple actually tests that accuracy with high-speed cameras that watch, frame-by-frame, as the Apple Watch second hand moves around, watching closely for even a hint of latency.”
Comparing it to the iPhone, Lynch says that the Watch is simply a better device at keeping time, and even said that the wearable is four times better than the iPhone in this department:
“…as a piece of hardware, [Apple Watch is] far more accurate as a timekeeping device than the iPhone,” said Lynch. It’s actually four times better, he noted.”
Check out the full discussion with Lynch in the source link below.
Are you still wearing an Apple Watch?
[via Mashable]
