What will the iPhone be able to do with a digital compass?

Seth Weintraub
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May 08, 2009
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The new iPhone's compass will allow it to do a lot of interesting stuff. We're imagining there will be some excellent apps that allow you to make a 3D rendering or a Quicktime VR using the camera with GPS and compass. It will also help out in the driving applications, especially at low speeds where the GPS can't figure out which direction one is traveling in.

Here's a simple use of Google Streetview using the Android's compass. Via Appe 2.0.  Another video below.

Comments (7)

Vaganza (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 8:02am

Allows turn by turn directions.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 9:13am

A lot of "driving" GPS units don't have a magnetic compass. So it in of itself doesn't enable turn-by-turn.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 9:48am

Walking ones do though, and it helps with low speed navigation, where the difference in GPS coordinate plus the error (+/- 10m each way) may make such navigation erattic otherwise.

You can make some rather pretty compass apps too.

Oh, and someone made the compass in the G1 work as a metal detector :p Depending on how programmable the iphone compass will be expect several of these on the app store.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 8:37am

Geocaching! The iPhone will be on a par with those £200/£300 GPS systems, just need the iPhone to be able to temporarily store the maps in memory when you loose the network signal. ;)

tom (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 9:06am

Enkin! Tonchidot!

Davau (not verified) | May 08, 2009 - 3:03pm

The one missing piece for cameras such as that in the iPhone to do a really good job with tagging images to a subject is the digital compass. You can imagine standing in a location and taking a scenic photo. Today that is tagged with latitude and longitude. But you could be standing at Glacier Point in Yosemite, for example. In one direction you will be imaging Half Dome and in another you could be taking a photo of El Capitan. The examples of this dynamic are so numerous.

The benefit this will bring to photo/mapping sites like Google's and others who choose to implement the imaging hooks that can come from the additional compass info will be very powerful.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | May 09, 2009 - 12:13am

developed in taiwan! yeaup, we are the main developers of technology here.