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The Measure app makes it easy to measure a person’s height, provided you have the right device.
Jason Cipriani / CNET
Apple not only included three cameras in the iPhone 12 Pro and the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but the company also added a lidar sensor. The new feature, a first for iPhones, helps improve portrait mode photos and even makes it possible to take those photos with a blurred background in night mode. The lidar sensor, however, has another trick it can do, and it’s sure to impress your friends at your next party (when it’s safe again, of course).
Lidar stands for “light and range detection” and works by bouncing lasers off objects to measure their distance, based on the time it takes for the light to return to the sensor. The sensor itself is not a new technology; In fact, the IPad Pro 2020 also has LIDAR, and the same technology is often used in autonomous cars.
Read more: The iPhone 12 brings us one step closer to the future without Apple’s port
Here’s a party trick I just discovered, with the help of MacRumors, and I lay out a few more below.
For my first hack, here’s how to use the iPhone 12 Pro’s camera to measure a person’s height in just a couple of seconds (I did this with my kids and they loved it).
Pretty cool stuff, right?
Apple
1. Open the Measure application on your iPhone.
2. Point the rear camera at a person who is standing or sitting and make sure that their entire body, from head to toe, is in the frame.
3. After a second or two, a line will appear above your head with an estimate of your height, including items like your hair or a hat.
Four. You can take a photo of the measurement with a tap on the shutter button, saving it to your camera roll.
In my test, the measurement was accurate to within a half inch. My son’s curly hair made his first measurement a little too high, but after combing it was perfect at 4 feet, 7.5 inches.
I also tested it on myself, and little things like the angle of my head or wearing a hat resulted in the same slightly short 5ft 9in reading. However, when I stood up straight, looking directly into the camera without a hat, it was more accurate, reading 5 feet 10 inches.
You can get a rough estimate of more than just a person’s height with the Measure app. You can use it to get the dimensions of a piece of furniture, for example to see if it will fit through a door. I recently measured a television to settle a debate about whether it was 55 or 65 inches (65).
When the Measure app was first launched with iOS 12, I explained how to use it to measure random household objects or figure in square feet. With the addition of lidar on Apple devices, the application becomes more accurate. So if you’ve updated your iPhone, the Measure tool is worth giving another shot.
With a third-party app, you can scan an entire room and create a 3D map.
Screenshots by Jason Cipriani / CNET
Want to try more fun lidar features?
The lidar sensor is not limited to measuring different objects. You can use it to create 3D maps of a room (as shown above), or a 3D recreation of a single object, which you can then print on a 3D printer when using an application like Polycam.
According to CNET’s Scott Stein, Apple Arcade’s Hot Lava game uses the lidar sensor to scan a room, after which it could hide virtual things behind real items in the room, like a chair.
As more apps are updated to enhance the augmented reality experience thanks to the lidar sensor, there is no telling what else we can do with supported iPhone and iPad models.
After impressing your friends and family with your iPhone 12 ($ 829 at Amazon) fun trick make sure you check out these hidden features in iOS 14. If you are still learning how to operate the iPhone 12, here are some settings worth checking out. For example, if you don’t live in an area with 5G coverage, You can turn it off.
