14 DAY TRIAL // The accelerometer inside every iPhone is one piece of technology that developers have been quite taken with. It enables a high level of usability across a plurality of tasks, including work and entertainment.
For example, the accelerometer inside our iDevices serves as a great input device for video games, particularly racing titles. Instead of covering the action on-screen with your fingers, you just tilt the device left and right to steer. Some games even use forward and backward tilting for accelerating and braking.
Even Apple found a rather interesting use for the accelerometer when it enabled a continuous scroll of the text in e-books. It made perfect sense, since anyone can read a screen-worth of words in about 10 seconds. Page flipping in this case becomes ridiculous.
Level apps use it too
A great deal of utility apps also employ the power of the accelerometer, as well as the gyro inside iPhones. Bubble level apps are the perfect example of how these sensors can work to the benefit of a construction worker, for example. However, to make accurate use of these apps, the phone needs to be perfectly straight.
In the case of the iPhone 6, bubble level apps tend to become irrelevant. Apple’s choice to install a protuberant camera means that when you rest the phone on its back, it doesn’t sit perfectly straight against a surface.
Given that the camera itself is flat, the phone doesn’t sit just on the two opposing corners. However, it doesn’t touch a table with all four corners either. Worst of all, the phone’s upper side is elevated ever so slightly, as shown in the pictures below. This causes the phone to record a slight elevation on surfaces that are otherwise completely flat.
Not exactly life threatening
We’re not picking holes in the iPhone’s jacket, of course. It’s not like you’ll find yourself in a situation where failing to determine if a surface is 100% flat will matter so much that you’ll end up suing Apple for telling you to trust the phone’s readings. Then again, stranger things have happened.
But it’s something worth noting, if only as a result of Apple’s design direction for 2014. Many people have called the protuberant camera a bad design choice, but the company’s reasons were mostly functionality-driven. In order to improve its smartphones’ camera yet make the devices smaller, something had to give.
And let’s face it. Even with a perfectly calibrated phone, no level app can beat a real bubble level tool. If it matters that much to you, get yourself a keychain that doubles as a bubble level.
