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The article is wrong about AOP being on while the phone is off. AOP is on while the phone is in standby. It powers down when you shut down the phone. Its job is

The article is wrong about AOP being on while the phone is off. AOP is on while the phone is in standby. It powers down when you shut down the phone. Its job is to save battery by doing things like the Hey Siri and sensors processing without powering up the main cores at all. It does not stay on when the system is shut down. The part about the Bluetooth chipset staying on is correct. Think about it, why would they need the AOP when the Bluetooth chipset can run that applet autonomously and send the beacons? Nothing is listening to your mics while the phone is off. The stuff that runs while the phone is off is rather limited. Mostly things related to the NFC chipset, to support payment and transport applications while the battery is dead (which is a requirement of some of those systems) and, as we just saw, Bluetooth LE features.

littlecranky67 5y ago
Upvoting you, as you are totally right. The AOP is a standby feature, not while powered off. And why would it, the BluetoothLE chips available for years already have this wake-up functionality drawing very little power. I own a Bose BT Speaker and a FiiO BTR5 - both can be "off" (using their power-off buttons) but will still suddenly turn on when I explicitly connect to them through my laptop or phone. They are in this BT LE listening state 24/7. All Apple did, is basically enable this mode now on the existing chips which are BT-LE capable for several iPhone generations. Once woken up using BT-LE, the AOP takes over to reply to FindMy-like beacons (and enable other iPhones to trigger the wake-up beacons when locating other phones).
- marcan_42 5y ago
  It's not even that; the AOP plays no role in this feature. The BT chipset can autonomously send the beacons. There is no mechanism for the AOP to wake up when the phone is off - it's dead and doesn't even have firmware loaded.

littlecranky67 5y ago

Upvoting you, as you are totally right. The AOP is a standby feature, not while powered off. And why would it, the BluetoothLE chips available for years already have this wake-up functionality drawing very little power. I own a Bose BT Speaker and a FiiO BTR5 - both can be "off" (using their power-off buttons) but will still suddenly turn on when I explicitly connect to them through my laptop or phone. They are in this BT LE listening state 24/7. All Apple did, is basically enable this mode now on the existing chips which are BT-LE capable for several iPhone generations. Once woken up using BT-LE, the AOP takes over to reply to FindMy-like beacons (and enable other iPhones to trigger the wake-up beacons when locating other phones).

marcan_42 5y ago
It's not even that; the AOP plays no role in this feature. The BT chipset can autonomously send the beacons. There is no mechanism for the AOP to wake up when the phone is off - it's dead and doesn't even have firmware loaded.