Kevin Lynch Details How Apple Watch Is 'Four Times' More Accurate Than iPhone

If you recall back in October of last year, when Apple unveiled the long-rumored Apple Watch, one of the hallmark features of the device was its ability to keep incredibly accurate time, “within 50 milliseconds” Tim Cook said.

In a short interview with Mashable, VP of Technology and watchOS leader, Kevin Lynch, has shared some details on why the Apple Watch stays in perfect sync:

Lynch actually told us that “as a piece of hardware, [Apple Watch is] far more accurate as a timekeeping device than the iPhone,” said Lynch. It’s actually four times better, he noted.

“Through the whole stack, we’ve really paid attention to the accuracy,” Lynch said, adding that Apple actually tests that accuracy with high-speed cameras that watch, frame-by-frame, as the Apple Watch second hand moves around, watching closely for even a hint of latency.

Lynch goes on to describe how Apple keeps that Apple Watch time so accurate:

Lynch also described the method Apple uses to keep the Apple Watch time as accurate as advertised:

“First of all, we’ve curated our own network time servers around the world,” said Lynch. There are, by his count, 15 such “Stratum One”-level Network Time Servers (NTP) (one level down from an atomic clock), scattered around the world. They’re all housed in buildings with GPS antennas on the roof that talk, you guessed it, to GPS satellites orbiting the earth, which all get their time information from the U.S. Naval Observatory. In other words, those satellites are all getting their times from one, big orbiting system.

The full interview is actually quite interesting and shows how detailed Apple can be with some of the tiniest things. It’s not something I think about often, but the fact that this thing keeps such accurate time, something many expensive watches have a hard time doing, is quite impressive.