My iPhone 12 Pro appears to have it. For measuring the height of objects it must work in conjunction with the iPhone’s accelerometers that detect tilt angle. Pretty neat.

“Users of the latest iPhone Pro models are just getting to grips with the functions of a mysterious black circle next to the cameras on the back of the latest iPhone models.

A recent Reddit post with 1,400 upvotes saw a user circling the mysterious circle and asking simply, ‘What’s it for?’

The circle is only found in the latest iPhone Pro models and certain iPad Pro models - and it’s actually very useful, enabling some of the device’s coolest apps and features.

The dot, which is built into the camera array, is actually a LiDAR scanner (it stands for Light Detection and Ranging).

Put simply, it’s a depth sensor which uses lasers to work out how far away things are.

It works by targeting an object with a pulsed laser and measuring how long it takes for the light to come back, enabling the iPhone or iPad to ‘build’ a 3D model of the world in front of it.

LiDAR technology has been used to uncover lost cities in the Amazon by ‘digitally deforesting’ the canopy and finding ruins beneath it, and is also used in self-driving cars to ‘sense’ the distance to other vehicles.

But in iPhones it’s used to enable advanced photography and augmented reality apps that ‘sense’ how far away things are - and apps that can automatically measure someone’s height for example.

Apple says: ‘The LiDAR Scanner measures the distance to surrounding objects up to 5 meters away, works both indoors and outdoors, and operates at the photon level at nano-second speeds.’ …”

DailyMail article:
https://mol.im/a/12465045

That feature something I would rarely use. The feature on an iPhone I'd like to see is one that tells me where I've left my glasses.

It’s a little awkward, not to mention expensive, to hang an Air Tag on EVERYTHING you might misplace.

quote:

Originally posted by abnmacv:
The feature on an iPhone I'd like to see is one that tells me where I've left my glasses.

That'd be a good feature. I've taken to hanging them from the collar of my shirt. Sometimes I STILL can't find them. "Where in the hell are my gla...oh."

Measure a person’s height with iPhone

https://support.apple.com/guid...ght-iph341d4a993/ios

This article also reported these supported models: all Pro and Pro Max from iPhone 12 on.

I knew of the height measurement capability, but I thought height was being estimated rather than actually measured/computed with the LiDAR technology.

quote:

augmented reality apps that ‘sense’ how far away things are

This is the significant aspect of the capability. The phone can / is mapping the room so it can overlay augmented reality objects accurately in that physical space.

Once mapped the phone will be able to identify and know which room it's in.