Skip to main content

Digital Trends may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Why trust us?

Apple’s 3D Touch displays on the iPhone 6S or 6S Plus can be used to weigh objects

Weighing Plums on an iPhone
Apple’s 3D Touch on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus opens up a number of nifty use cases, including the ability to peek at emails without opening them, draw dynamic pictures with your finger, and weigh plums. That last one is made possible thanks to a developer who lives in Paris.

In a playfully written blog post, Simon Gladman talks about his newest app, which is called the Plum-O-Meter. As its name implies, the app leverages the 3D Touch technology in his iPhone 6S to act as a scale of sorts that tells the user which of the objects placed on the smartphone’s screen is heavier.

Gladman’s video example shows three plums lined up and placed two at a time onto the screen of his iPhone 6S. The Plum-O-Meter app displays the normalized force of each object on the screen as a percentage and uses a yellow highlight to indicate which object is heaviest.

The app is open source and can be sideloaded onto an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus without any jailbreaking.

Technically, the iPhone’s multitouch display can simultaneously sense up to five objects at a time, iDownloadBlog points out.

“I did originally build this app for grapes, but they’re too light to activate the 3D Touch,” Gladman writes in his blog post.

Whatever you may decide to weigh on an iPhone 6S or 6S Plus screen, it may be a good idea to properly clean the screen beforehand or remember to clean those objects afterward.

AT&T  Sprint  T-Mobile Verizon

 AT&T  Sprint  T-Mobile Verizon

Editors' Recommendations

Jason Hahn
Jason Hahn is a part-time freelance writer based in New Jersey. He earned his master's degree in journalism at Northwestern…
Don’t buy a Galaxy S24 Ultra or iPhone 15 Pro Max. Do this instead
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Mint Green color along with a Samsung notebook and a cermaic bowl with lemons.

“Do I need all that?” That’s the question on the mind of shoppers before they splurge a now-standard $1,000 asking price for a top-tier phone in 2024. Ideally, that dilemma should be there. The likes of Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro Max have won laurels for a handful of standout features they offer. But you might not need those standout features at all.

I’ve been on that road, and more frequently than I have the temerity to admit. For some reason, regret comes as part of the $1,200 flagship parcel. That's unless your phone is a part of your creative or work process, or you just don’t care and only want the latest and greatest for the vanity of it. A segment like that certainly exists, but that affluent user base doesn’t dictate the journey of a product.

Read more
I’m a lifelong iPhone user. Here’s what I think about the Samsung Galaxy S24
The Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra and S Pen stylus on its screen.

Samsung and Apple typically release new smartphones at different times of the year. Samsung usually does it early in the year, while Apple waits until the fall ahead of the holiday shopping season. As always, Apple tends to release new iPhones that outdo the ones Samsung released earlier, and then when the calendar changes, Samsung comes back with something to better compete with Apple, and so forth.

Samsung has recently announced its Galaxy S24 series, which has sparked the curiosity of iPhone owners like myself. Many of us are currently exploring the features of these phones and seeing which ones aren't available on our iPhones, myself included. Some are entirely new, while others have been introduced on previous Samsung Galaxy S models. Although many seem promising, some may not be as appealing to iPhone users. Here are a few of the Galaxy S24 features I like — and a few I don't.
Circle to Search looks impressive
Circle to Search Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Read more
You won’t believe how I improved my phone’s battery life
The back of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, resting against a post.

Galaxy S24 Ultra Andy Boxall / Digital Trends

Sorry for using that tired old clickbait headline, but in a roundabout way, it’s true. You genuinely won’t believe that I’m about to tell you something so headbangingly obvious about smartphone batteries.

Read more