iPhone 14 UWB regression ?

Hello everyone!

We are a small team developing third-party accessories using NXP and Qorvo chips.

Two of our teammates have bought the new iPhone 14 and it seems that we have no azimuth no more regarding UWB sessions. We have tested on the Qorvo NearbyInteraction app from the App Store.

By debugging on our own application, it seems we never have a valid direction vector.

Is anyone experiencing the same issue ? Did Apple made an iPhone 14 less efficient than the iPhone 13 on UWB ?

Regards,

Alexandre

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Red13
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Dear Alexandre,

I have exactly the same problem with iphone 14 pro. Please inform me if you find any other information.

Best, Mohammad

Posted by
mhmmdshirazi
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After going a bit more in depth it seems that apple disabled the direction measurement for Iphone 14 family. You can check it by reading this function's return value:

NISession.deviceCapabilities.supportsDirectionMeasurement

I still don't know if it is a hw change or it is something in the sw that can be resolved.

Posted by
mhmmdshirazi
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I am having the same issue with iPhone 14 for some reason. I filed a bug report (FB11806564) and I also posted a similar question here before finding this thread.

Posted by
theo_k
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  • Hi Theo, I'm still having this issue as well. What is the status of the bug report? Thanks

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    Scott Hickmann
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Has anyone been able to resolve this issue?

Posted by
Scott Hickmann
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Hello,

Exactly the same issue here. If anyone can find any workaround or have information, please share.

Best,

Thomas

Posted by
thomdrookn
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Hi there,

Does anyone find any workaround of iPhone 14 family with UWB?

Regards

Posted by
Fahad Baig
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Hi there. Did you find any explanations? Because it seemed strange when Apple changed API for 16 iOS with checking of support and capabilities and then current iPhones where direction measure does not work.

Posted by
ArthurPhilipenko
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I filed a DTS and the reply was that the direction is not supported in iPhone 14. For direction information the camera assistance feature needs to be used (backed by AR).

My guess is that it is not a bug. They chose to remove it.

Posted by
theo_k
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Yep. I would agree with that. My suspicion is that they've gone for a single antenna solution instead of the 2 antennas that they used to derive the azimuth. I presume that they've chosen to do that to mitigate privacy issues associated with Airtag and similar products.

Posted by
HenryND
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Heyo.
RA here with a contact in Qorvo. Can confirm what Henry said, the 14 only has one antenna in it. I was given some additional potential reasons as well:
Cost, difficulty implementing it (i.e. no room in the phone), and that placement wasn't ideal for AoA or PDoA.
Depending on how the user holds their iPhone, their water-filled hand could cover the antenna which was just above the apple logo on previous models.
From WWDC22 it looks like they want direction information to come from the camera using nearby interactions camera assist (which is dependent on ARKit).
I guess they figure it's unlikely for the camera to be covered.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Good luck in your projects to everyone who stumbles upon this thread 🫶💛

Posted by
MageOfHours
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  • Hi,

    Do you know if iPhone 13 models have the same spec as 14 or they have one more antenna like 11 or 12? Could you please confirm by any chance? Thank you so much!

    —
    zhhh

  • Hi all, suddenly found this post as I face this problem for long time, and I debugging it without any idea, Yes, i also suspect they change to 1 antenna in Iphone14 so that there is no direction information in nearby, but on the other hand, there air tag is working fine in their FindMy apps with direction, seems multiple antenna still exist , what do you think?

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    Terencewyt
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Hi,

Does anyone know if iPhone 12/13 models return both distance and direction solely on UWB? Could anyone please confirm? Thanks!

Posted by
zhhh
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  • yes zhhh, the 12/13 work fine with just UWB.

    we have our own UI, can't use AR display, how do we engage ARkit without using display? video frames passthru in the background. our users are blind, low vision, so AR on screen is useless.

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    sdetweil
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