Apparently iOS calculator has been in scientific condition since 2008

Today I can learn that the iPhone’s built-in calculator app has a scientific mode – and all you have to do to access it is to turn your phone to its side. If you’re the type of person who keeps your phone permanently in portrait (like me), this might come as a surprise to you, as it did for many people here. Edge.

This unlocks all sorts of functions, such as adding numbers to memory, parentheses, exponents and all those later trigger functions in high school. The feature isn’t exactly new or hidden: it was released back in 2008 in iOS 2.0, and is actually a screenshot of it on the App Store page for the calculator app.

To be fair, most people never see that App Store page, as the app is pre-installed in every phone. It’s not the first application you might find if you want to install a new calculator, or even with the hidden (ish) function, it’s still not great.

For starters, there is no ticker tap feature, which lets you see all the actions you have just performed, which is useful when you need to see if you have already added value. It also does some essential functions like brackets – which I use in almost every math equation – are hard to access.

Thankfully, there are other options: PCLK offers a more robust computing experience, and NiPC offers a paid PCLC Lite version that is also worth downloading. Or for more serious math, there’s the TI-30XS, which can make some things (like fractions), it almost feels like cheating.