iPhone 5s will continue to track your movement even after its battery dies

Prepare to either be superbly impressed or incredibly terrified. As per a post written by Reddit user “Glarznak,” Apple’s iPhone 5s supposedly continues to track a user’s movements even after its battery has died.

I know, I know — this is according to some unknown user from the InterWebs, who’s airing his conspiracy theories on a site like Reddit. But before you dismiss this story, you should know that it does have some legitimacy to it.

First, Glarznak’s story:

“While traveling abroad, my iPhone cable stopped working so my 5s died completely,” he wrote. “I frequently use Argus to track my steps (highly recommended if you have any health bands or accessories) since it takes advantage of the M7 chip built into the phone. Once I got back from my vacation and charged the phone, I was surprised to see that Argus displayed a number of steps for the 4 days that my phone was dead.”

He concluded: “I’m both incredibly impressed and slightly terrified.”

Now, when a phone’s battery dies, there’s always a little bit of charge left to keep power flowing to certain components. Now, apparently, as per Glarznak’s post, the M7 chip is one of those components. Among other things, it’s a motion coprocessor and it tracks users’ steps and feeds this data to third-party fitness apps. 

What’s impressive is that it was able to track four days’ worth of data on a negligible amount of power. It’s also frightening that a device continued to monitor its owner’s location for four days on a negligible amount of power.

What do you think? Post your comments below.

Story via reddit