You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.
Apple's 3D Touch display used to weigh objects in new video

Apple's 3D Touch display used to weigh objects in new video

iDevices
October 25, 2015

Apple’s 3D Touch display, which launched first on the iPhone 6s (and 6s Plus), has a lot of use cases, ranging from browser “peeks” to dedicated in-game gestures and actions. Now, however, one developer has demonstrated a brand new use for the handsets’ pressure-sensitive display: comparing the weight of objects.

Simon Gladman, in a new video (via iDownloadBlog), shows off how a jailbreak-only iOS app called Plum-o-Meter can accurately compare the weight of plums using an iPhone 6s handset’s 3D Touch display. As you can see in the below video, the app allows iPhone owners to place two objects side by side in order to gain a percentage of the plums’ weight relative to the display’s maximum force. It uses a private API in order to make the calculation, however, and as such we aren’t expecting the application to launch on Apple’s App Store.

The iPhone 6s handset's "peek and pop" feature.

The iPhone 6s handset’s “peek and pop” feature.

The developer explains:

3D Touch to the rescue! My latest app, the Plum-O-Meter, has been specifically designed to solve this problem. Simply place two delicious plums on the iPhone’s screen and the heavier of the two is highlighted in yellow so you can hand it to your beloved without fear of being thought of as a greedy-guts.

Since the 3D Touch multi-touch display can pick up five objects at a time, it is, in theory, possible to compare the weight of five different objects (though you’d have a hard time doing so with five plums, even with the larger 6s Plus handset’s 5.5-inch screen).

Here’s the video:

If you can’t see the above video, please click this link.

So, even though Plum-o-Meter isn’t going to launch on the App Store any time soon, this new piece of software demonstrates how the 3D Touch display could, in time, offer users an even wider range of features. What do you think?

Related articles