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Apple launched the iPhone 15 Pro series with big upgrades in performance and new camera capability. But the company has also made a big change to its connectivity features, where you now have the Indian Space Research Organizations’ (ISRO) NavIC tech which offers navigation support and is India’s own version of the Global Positioning System (GPS) that is run by the US government.

As you might be aware, NavIC has been developed by ISRO which has collaborated with Qualcomm to integrate the navigation tech into its mobile chipsets. But now the space agency from India has managed to work with Apple for the new A17 Pro chipset and integrate NavIC to the new iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max models, which is a big feat as a whole.

When you browse through the specifications of the iPhone 15 Pro models on Apple’s website, you will see that in the location segment, you have the usual suspects, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, QZSS, BeiDou and NavIC. It will be interesting to see if Apple utilises the NavIC system for iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max users in India.

NavIC provides two types of location services—the standard positioning service as well as the encrypted service for security agencies as well as military access. The NavIC system relies on 7 satellites, of which 3 are geostationary earth orbit (GEO) satellites and 4 are geosynchronous orbit (GSO) satellites. It has India its own navigation system which will operate even when there are geopolitical tensions in the future. Also, with a local system in place, the navigation accuracy is bound to be better.

Talking about the new A17 Pro chip, Apple is only bringing it to the Pro variants this year. The new chipset is made on a 3nm process, a first in the industry, and Apple claims it offers 20 per cent increased GPU performance, aimed at gamers. Apple also points out that having more cores helps the A17 Pro deliver better performance at higher efficiency. The new chip also manages to optimise the USB C port to offer data transfer speeds of up to 10Gbps.