The new iPhone helps users to keep social distance

Once again, Apple technology has managed to create something innovative and really useful to everyone, especially at a time when social (or physical) distancing is still very important. Thanks to the new Apple models, even those who cannot see well can now detect people nearby thus maintain the right safety distance. 

The People Detection function has been made available on the new iPhone Pro, iPhone Pro Max and iPad Pro 2020 devices with the launch of the latest iOS 14.2 update. People Detection works thanks to the Lidar sensor placed on the back of the phone, close to the external camera and “offers advanced depth-sensing functions”. The combination of the new scanner and our smartphone Magnifier will be able to calculate and indicate the distance between us and other people, within a radius of five meters or fifteen feet. 

Tim Cook’s company has created People Detection taking care, above all, of people with limitations and vision difficulties, but this new function can be useful for everyone. 

Let’s see when this new feature could be both effective and efficient: for example, a blind or visually impaired person who is perhaps waiting to pay at the cash desk, can use the sensor that will be able to warn when the queue advances, thus allowing him/her to continue keeping safe distances; the device will detect and communicate proximity to other people even when we walk down the street; or even, it will be able to notify if a seat is free or not, all this by framing the space around us with the camera. In the settings we can choose the unit of measurement we prefer to display the estimated distance (meters or feet), in the dark or in low light conditions the sensor is not able to calculate proximity. 

We can customize the way we receive feedback on the proximity to other people in four different ways: the iPhone can tell us the distance by saying it out loud; otherwise we can choose to receive acoustic tones that will change based on approaching another person; or through “haptic feedback”, therefore the closer a person is to us, the stronger our device will buzz; the last possibility is to read the feedback directly on our screen. 

Apple’s innovation, its technical skills and the continuous search for the best solutions, allow us to have more and more advanced devices that are increasingly suitable for every need.