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How The M7 Motion Co-Processor Will Improve The iPhone 5s Battery Life And Performance

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Alongside the new 64-bit A7 CPU, Apple announced the M7 motion co-processor at the launch of the iPhone 5s today. This new chip should help increase the battery life of the iPhone 5s, while offering developers many more opportunities to innovate with the smartphone's sensor technology.

Much like a GPU takes the graphical calculations away from the CPU to free it up for more important core tasks, the M7 chip reduces the load on the CPU. It will take the raw data from the various movement and geo-location hardware sensors, and directly output workable data for applications to use.

As a dedicated chip, this should reduce the battery demands across the system, as well as freeing up more processing time on the CPU.

Developers will also have easier access to the M7 chip through the new Core Motion Framework. Applications will be able to receive "device-motion events" at regular intervals, or they can call for this information on demand. Core Motion will handle date from the accelerometer, the magnetometer, and the gyroscope.

Many of the applications inside the App Store's health and fitness categories are already being reworked to take advantage of iOS 7, which includes the Core Motion Framework. The addition of the M7 chip should not require any significant code changes, but will allow these applications to be more efficient when using the M7, as the A7 CPU will not need to be powered up to process the raw positioning data if the iPhone is not being used. When the iPhone 5s is in use, the A7 won't have to stop any intensive processing to handle the requests of a step counting application, the M7 will handle that, pass the data to the application, and the iPhone 5s remains fast and responsive to every application, both in the foreground and the background.

Expect updated applications from the likes of Runkeeper, Sports Tracker, and Endomondo, plus hardware such as the Fitbit and Nike's Fuelband, to take advantage of the improved positioning technology the M7 offers. It's likely that the first few apps will simply be more efficient, but as developers get to grips with the M7, I'm expecting the innovation to increase.

The M7 chip takes one expected function of iOS and makes it more efficient in terms of power and speed. I would be interested to find out just how much of a gain the M7/A7 combination gives the iPhone 5s over a theoretical iPhone 5s with just the A7 chip, but at this level of technology, any small gains in increasing battery life and reducing CPU overhead will be welcomed by the designers, and the consumers.