Comment by fapjacks
4 years ago
It's nice of you to accept Apple's calling it "radio" but UWB is radar technology. Newer iPhones have radar built into them to make their location tracking more precise. Most people don't understand (or can't understand) the details, which is why the semantic load of calling UWB "radar" instead of "radio" is important for conveying its intended purpose.
The RA in RADAR stands for RAdio. It’s like saying “light pointer” instead of “laser pointer”. For most people the distinction is irrelevant.
You didn't understand what I said. I have an amateur extra license, and do a lot of volunteer work proselytizing for ham radio, working at field days, etc. For most people, there is a semantic payload with "radio" which conveys "communication" versus "radar" which conveys "tracking" (I imagine any semantic vector map would demonstrate this is true). The distinction is relevant, especially in the context of "your phone manufacturer is using this to improve its ability to track you in realtime". The UWB which newer iPhones use is not used for communication, because these frequencies are not suitable for that (yet?) in the environment. UWB is used for localization. Maybe there is some marketing material claiming that they're working on using it for "communication" but not anything like the conventional radio(s) the phone uses for communication.