3D Touch is the hottest new feature on Apple’s latest smartphones, the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. Using a combination of special hardware in an iPhone’s display and new software features in iOS, the latest iPhones are able to read the amount of pressure a user applies when pressing on the screen. Then, the phone can perform different functions based on that reading.
It’s a very cool feature that took five years to develop and as you might imagine, Apple rivals like Samsung are already hard at work copying it, as you undoubtedly already assumed. What you might not know, however, is that 3D Touch has some pretty nifty features that Apple doesn’t support on its iPhones out of the box.
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In order to function effectively, Apple’s 3D Touch hardware needs to be remarkably precise. How precise? 3D Touch can measure pressure so accurately that it can actually weigh items that you place on the iPhone’s screen. Apple apparently has no desire to let people use the iPhone 6s as a digital scale though, so it doesn’t allow apps with scale features in the App Store.
Of course, there are ways around that little obstacle and one developer has already found one.
As OS X Daily points out, there is a cool new website hosted on GitHub that utilizes Safari’s access to 3D Touch data to offer users a surprisingly accurate digital scale feature. The site can weigh items up to 385 grams, which is the most pressure 3D Touch can sense, and it gives out readings to the hundredth of a gram.
Here’s how it works:
- Open this site in Safari on your iPhone 6s or iPhone 6s Plus
- Place your iPhone on a flat surface with the screen facing up.
- Place a spoon, a small cup, or anything else that can hold whatever you’d like to weigh on the screen and press the Tare button to zero the scale.
- Place the item you want to weigh in the spoon or cup.
Of note, you may have to set your iPhone’s 3D Touch sensitivity back to its default setting to get accurate readings if you’ve changed it in the past.
