iPhone 12 Pro Cool MagSafe Case Animation - Data over MagSafe?

[NightFox]

Just swapped my iPhone 12 Pro from its original silicon MagSafe case to a leather one that arrived today and noticed that as you push the phone into the case, there's a brief animation on the screen which is the same colour as the case it's being inserted into (I've tried it with a blue silicon case and a red leather case), so there's clearly some communication between MagSafe cases and the phone. We kind of knew that rudimentary data-over-Magsafe (at least in one direction) must be possible as the iPhone changes its display when it's inserted into the yet-to-be-released pouch thing, but it was a nice surprise to see it implemented with the cases too. I guess the data is maybe hard-encoded into the magnets on the case, but future powered accessories might be able to send variable data based on varying the strengths of the various magnets.

Of course, people might still have mixed feelings over MagSafe, but this is one of those little detail things that always marked Apple out from the rest.

 

[MCube74]

This is not really a big deal.

Other phone manufacturers have released cases which changed wallpapers or had some lighting efforts on the case when installed. The Asus ROG phone isn’t one and I believe Samsung and LG and other suppliers have had such features released couple of years ago.

This is all due to the NFC chip in the case.

Apple as usual is late to use such features and try to market it as if they are the first.

 

[NightFox]

Ok, didn’t realise this was already a thing, I don’t have much exposure to non-Apple phones. That said I think it’s a bit unfair to accuse Apple of marketing this as if they’re first when they haven’t made any mention of it anywhere that I’m aware of.