iPhone 5 Portable Genius

Getting Your Bearings with the Compass App

Your iPhone is loaded with fancy equipment, perhaps the most famous of which is the accelerometer, which enables the iPhone to sense when its orientation changes. (It’s the accelerometer that makes so many of the iPhone games so addictive.) Your iPhone also comes with an internal gadget called a magnetometer, which is a device that measures the direction and intensity of a magnetic field. That sounds a bit esoteric, but having data about the magnetic field means that the iPhone can orient itself with respect to direction. It is, in short, a compass!

With the iPhone acting as a compass, you can do two things:

Orient a map. In Maps, tap the Tracking icon to see your current location, and then tap the Tracking icon a second time. Your iPhone orients the map so that it matches the direction you’re facing. Nice!

Get your bearings. On the Home screen, tap the Utilities Folder, tap Compass, and, if your iPhone asks whether Compass can use your current location, tap OK. This launches the Compass app, which, as you can see in Figure 11.10, bears an uncanny resemblance to a real compass. Also like a real compass, the app always points north (true north or magnetic north — tap the i button in the bottom-right corner to choose which), so you always ...