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A comment on How does Apple privately find offline devices?. Parent comment

Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by ladberg on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @06:19PM (#20109720)
Complete speculation here, but I wouldn't be surprised if devices could keep broadcasting the ping after they're "dead". Tiles last for years without charging, so I bet if Apple can leave on only the bluetooth beacon after the battery drains past where it can power the rest of the phone then this would be doable.

Again complete speculation, I have zero clue if the current hardware is even capable of doing this.

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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by snazz on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @06:22PM (#20109734)
The current hardware might not be, but you could run this on a secondary chip similar in specs to the T2 or Secure Enclave. You could theoretically even have a second battery specifically for this purpose, but that would likely be cost-prohibitive.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by etaoins on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @06:44PM (#20109882)
The T2 chip is a derivative of the A10. It has similar power requirements to the SOC in modern iPhones.

They could probably use a cut down derivative of the W2 chip used in AirPods with the audio codec etc. removed. I’m guessing phone batteries reach a point where they’re still storing energy but can’t provide enough current to safely boot the whole phone. The BLE chip could sip on the remainder of the battery for a long time.

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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by snazz on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:15PM (#20110057)
That sounds reasonable. I had no idea the T2 was that powerful.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by Phlarp on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:39PM (#20110181)
It's also the SSD controller, and quite impressive in that regard.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by photojosh on Thursday June 06, 2019 @12:43AM (#20111652)
I bet the T3, whenever that arrives, will be a derivative of the A12 or A13, and provide the neural network accelerator to MacOS and CoreML.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by Phlarp on Saturday June 08, 2019 @03:29AM (#20131127)
This would be excellent. I'm hesitant about the prospect of an ARM based macbook, but having both seems mighty compelling. As a lower power application CPU for light usage, or a full x86 with accelerators / co-processors when needed.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by m463 on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:06PM (#20110015)
recent apple phones have NFC, which cannot be disabled.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by walterbell on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:11PM (#20110037)
Can NFC be used by iOS applications, e.g. SSH authentication via smartcard, where the private key never leaves the card?
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by toyg on Thursday June 06, 2019 @05:11AM (#20112831)
Not at the moment, but one element suggesting it will be in iOS 13 is that the UK Home Office announced their app for validating European passports (which uses NFC but only on Android at the moment) will be able to work on Apple devices at the end of this year - basically when iOS 13 will be released.
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Re:How does Apple privately find offline devices? by LeoNatan25 on Wednesday June 05, 2019 @07:47PM (#20110219)
I think it is possible in iOS 13, unless I misread the WWDC video description.
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