Secrets of Your Device

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Secrets of Your Device is a museum of what the device in your hand is sensing right now. Every number on screen is a live reading taken at that moment. There is no simulation and nothing computed to stand in for a measurement. Which means nothing happens in this app unless you physically move the device. ■ Nine rooms • Accelerometer: why it reads 1.0 G while sitting still. Tilt to settle the ball in the centre • Gyroscope: it measures the rate of turning, not the direction. Turn exactly 90 degrees • Barometer: height from the weight of the air. Measure a building's height per floor • Magnetometer: hunt for magnets in the room, and see why a heading needs gravity too • Depth camera: how far away is that. How LiDAR and TrueDepth differ • Light: the ambient light sensor is out of reach, so the camera's exposure becomes a light meter • Radio: the Bluetooth signals in the air. Pick one device and walk towards it • Positioning: how finely a position can be fixed, and which digits of it mean anything • Neural Engine: hand it any prompt and measure how fast the answer arrives Each room runs in four stages: a 30-second brief, free observation of the raw values, a mission you complete by moving, and a card explaining why the readings come out that way. ■ The panel Every sensor on one screen, with the readings that come from a single part kept separate from the ones that only appear when parts work together. Each instrument shows which parts it uses. Arrange and hide them as you like. ■ Your device chart Walking the rooms fills in a record of your device: the parts it carries, how much each sensor wanders at rest (and therefore how many digits you can trust), and the trips you have measured up and down. ■ "Not in this model" is an exhibit too Two devices running the same iOS can hold different parts. Rooms your device cannot run are never hidden — what is missing is shown as well, because the differences between devices are part of the subject. ■ No network No account, no ads, no analytics. Camera images, device names and coordinates are never stored or sent. The app has no networking at all and works entirely offline.Read more

Secrets of Your Device is a museum of what the device in your hand is sensing right now. Every number on screen is a live reading taken at that moment. There is no simulation and nothing computed to stand in for a measurement. Which means nothing happens in this app unless you physically move the device. ■ Nine rooms • Accelerometer: why it reads 1.0 G while sitting still. Tilt to settle the ball in the centre • Gyroscope: it measures the rate of turning, not the direction. Turn exactly 90 degrees • Barometer: height from the weight of the air. Measure a building's height per floor • Magnetometer: hunt for magnets in the room, and see why a heading needs gravity too • Depth camera: how far away is that. How LiDAR and TrueDepth differ • Light: the ambient light sensor is out of reach, so the camera's exposure becomes a light meter • Radio: the Bluetooth signals in the air. Pick one device and walk towards it • Positioning: how finely a position can be fixed, and which digits of it mean anything • Neural Engine: hand it any prompt and measure how fast the answer arrives Each room runs in four stages: a 30-second brief, free observation of the raw values, a mission you complete by moving, and a card explaining why the readings come out that way. ■ The panel Every sensor on one screen, with the readings that come from a single part kept separate from the ones that only appear when parts work together. Each instrument shows which parts it uses. Arrange and hide them as you like. ■ Your device chart Walking the rooms fills in a record of your device: the parts it carries, how much each sensor wanders at rest (and therefore how many digits you can trust), and the trips you have measured up and down. ■ "Not in this model" is an exhibit too Two devices running the same iOS can hold different parts. Rooms your device cannot run are never hidden — what is missing is shown as well, because the differences between devices are part of the subject. ■ No network No account, no ads, no analytics. Camera images, device names and coordinates are never stored or sent. The app has no networking at all and works entirely offline.