Apple Watch, the first wearable from the Cupertino giant, has long been marketed as an incredibly precise timepiece. But what makes the Apple Watch so precise? A company's executive recently laid bare on the specifics, adding that Apple Watch is more accurate in keeping time than the iPhone it relies on.
An issue with traditional, needle watches is that they aren't as accurate as we want them to be. Every once in a while you are required to make adjustments. Smartphones don't need that: Your iPhone or even an Android smartphone can show you the most accurate time. The Apple Watch works in a similar way, but with some differences. It uses a crystal temperature-control oscillator, which can withstand extreme temperatures. This as a result makes the Apple Watch time more accurate.
"Through the whole stack, we've really paid attention to the accuracy," Kevin Lynch, VP of Technology at Apple told Mashable. He added that the company tests the accuracy of these watches with high-speed cameras monitoring the display time. He further claimed that if you put two Apple Watch models side by side, they will show the exactly same time, perfectly synced to the second.
This happens because instead of fetching information from multiple sources, Apple Watch taps a centralised server. "First of all, we've curated our own network time servers around the world," he said. Apple Watch has been previously said to offer time as accurate as within 50 milliseconds of the definitive global time standard.
He noted that the company maintains 15 "Stratum One" - level Network Time Servers (NTP), housed inside buildings with GPS antennas keeping up the time with GPS satellites orbiting the earth. These satellites get their time information from the US Naval Observatory. The server communicates with iPhone handsets around the world via the Internet, and then the iPhone talks to the Apple Watch over a Bluetooth connection. The company noted that it does time corrections for any delay.
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