With the Apple iPhone media event happening today, the current rumor is that the 2019 model iPhone will include at least one mode with a “Rose” or “R1” sensor co-processor.
While Apple has used motion co-processors in the iPhone since the iPhone 5S in 2018, the first two (known as “M7” and “M8” were separate chips. The “M9” through “M12” chips were integrated into the A-series processor, and processed data from the accelerometer, gyroscope, compass, barometer, and even enable the microphone to listen for “Hey, Siri.” At this point in time, it’s now considered custom circuitry to process sensor info in a very high-performance and low-power way, so it can be done even while the phone is in sleep mode.
The iPhone 11 is said to include a new “Rose” or “R1” sensor coprocessor, which has been noted via code references from an internal build of iOS 13. The new processor supposedly performs a similar function to the M-series co-processors, only it processes data from many more types of sensors in order to get a more accurate picture of the phone’s position and orientation.
Stay tuned for full coverage of Apple’s media and please let us know what you make of this in the comments.