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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Technology
Alan Martin

How to use your iPhone to measure a Christmas tree (or just about anything)

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How to measure a Christmas tree with your iPhone

(Picture: Egor Komarov / Pexels)

Anybody who has bought a lovely Christmas tree, only to find you can’t get it through the door will tell you, it’s important to measure things. But tape measures aren’t always practical and are easily forgotten. So how do you check if the tree (or anything else) will fit next to the sofa before you lug it home? In a pinch, the answer could be your iPhone.

Since the iPhone 12 Pro was released, Apple’s Pro handsets have packed a little-used sensor called LiDAR — or “Light Detecting and Ranging”. This uses light to measure distances surprisingly accurately for objects great and small.

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