Apple iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max get support for India’s own GPS NavIC for the first time

iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max in India: Apple hosted its annual fall event, dubbed as ‘Wonderlust’, at Apple Park last night. At the event, the company introduced the iPhone 15 Pro series models, which includes the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Both these iPhone models bring significant updates to last year’s iPhone 14 Pro models with features such as the A17 Pro chipset, 5x optical zoom, Spatial Video support, a new Action button and a USB 3 port to name a few. These new iPhone models also support India’s GPS, that is, NavIC.

Until last year, Apple‘s iPhone models offered support for a total of five GPS systems, which includes US’ GPS, Russia’s GLONASS, European Union’s Galileo, Japan’s QZSS and China’s BeiDou. This year, the company has also adopted the Indian satellite navigation system — NavIC — for its high-end iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max models for location-based services. The company mentioned in the tech specifications that iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max now support the homegrown NavIC system, an alternative to the Global Positioning System (GPS).

It is worth noting that this is the first time the Apple has extended support for NavIC to its iPhone models, making the iPhone 15 Pro and the iPhone 15 Pro Max first devices in its iPhone portfolio to offer support for India’s GPS system.

As far as NaVIC is concerned, as of now, select smartphone makers such as Xiaomi, OnePlus and Realme offer support for India’s NaVIC on select smartphones. India is trying to change this and expand NavIC’s coverage across the globe by pushing tech companies to add support for NavIC to their devices in a bid to reduce reliance on GPS and other navigational systems. At a time like this, Apple adding support for NavIC to its iPhone 15 Pro series devices will help in promoting the adoption of the technology in devices by other companies as well.

But, what is NavIC?

NaVIC stands for Navigation with Indian Constellation and it is a constellation of regional navigation satellites by ISRO. As of now, there are eight first-generation NavIC satellites in orbit. In May, India successfully put into orbit the first of its second-generation navigation satellite NVS-01. NavIC’s coverage area includes India and a region up to 1,500 km beyond Indian boundary. Additionally, NavIC’s SPS signals are interoperable with the other global navigation satellite system (GNSS) including GPS, Glonass, Galileo and BeiDou.