The iPhone 3.0 will feature a magnetometer ‘digital compass’ to assist with GPS navigation, a source tells us.
The iPhone’s next incarnation has been rumoured to contain a digital compass for some time and recent photos leaked to Boy Genius Report seem to confirm this.
Seeing those pics, sources who attended a recent Apple iPhone SDK training event got in touch with us to confirm that Apple staff had told attendees a digital compass was definitely going to be part of the next iPhone hardware.
A magnetometer that works as a digital compass will enable the iPhone to determine which direction it is being held in. This will allow useful things like turn-by-turn navigation (time to ditch that satnav?) and ‘augmented reality’ apps that superimpose info about a location onto a camera view or Google Street View image.
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With all these features the N97 may have a tough time!