WLAN chip N1: Apple promises more efficient iPhone location tracking

For the first time there is a WLAN chip from Apple in iPhones: In the iPhone 17, 17 Pro (Max) and iPhone Air, the manufacturer’s own N1 chip manufactures the connections to WLAN routers and also supports Bluetooth and thread. Apple has so far been covered with technical details, except to refer to support for the WLAN 7 and Bluetooth 6 standards. The N1 should perform and reliability of functions such as the “personal hotspot”, in which the iPhone serves another device as a mobile phone modem and improve airdrop.

Background tracking sparingly via WLAN instead of GPS

In an interview, Apple Manager now promised an efficiency advantage as concrete as well as tangible: Due to the joint development of N1 and A19 Pro, the main processor can largely “sleep” for important wireless connections, explained the chip platform for Apple’s chip platform Responsible Tim Millet towards CNBC. At the same time, however, this enables background activities with “extremely low energy needs”, including “tracking the location with high accuracy”.

The iPhone uses GPS or GNSS and information about mobile phone masts as well as the WLAN SSIDs in the area-the latter, especially in cities and interiors, ensures a fairly precise location. Apple operates a huge database to which each iPhone contributes data on the WLANs in its own environment. As a result, it is possible to use the current-hungry GPS for location tracking and “not to arouse the main processor so often,” said another Apple manager in the interview.

New location functions for Apple cards

By default, iOS records the frequent locations of the iPhone and thus the owner on the device. The data is also synchronized by iCloud between your own devices, protected by end-to-end encryption, as Apple promises.

With iOS 26, Apple’s card app is also intended to note the course of the places visited and learn the routes that users use-in order to submit suggestions for a different pendulum path at traffic jam. Apple has so far blocked these functions in the EU. The group apparently fears that he would otherwise have to open it to other app providers according to the rules of the DMA.