Which iPhones have LiDAR, and do you need it?

The short answer

The Pro iPhones have LiDAR: the iPhone 12 Pro and every Pro and Pro Max since. So do iPad Pros from 2020 on. The standard, Plus, mini and SE iPhones do not. You can still measure a pile without it: Stockpile uses the camera instead, and tells you so before you start.

How to tell if yours has it

• Look at the back. LiDAR is a flat black dot beside the camera lenses, about the size of the flash.
• Check the name. Open Settings, then General, then About, and read the model name. If it says Pro, and it is a 12 Pro or newer, it has LiDAR.

What LiDAR does for measuring a pile

LiDAR measures distance directly. It sends out light, times how long it takes to come back, and gets the distance to the pile's surface without guessing from the picture.

That matters most on surfaces a camera struggles with: wet material, a heap that is all one colour, or a pile in poor light. The scanner reaches a few metres, which is why you walk round the pile a few metres back from it.

Measuring without LiDAR

On an iPhone or iPad without LiDAR, Stockpile takes photographs as you walk and builds the pile's surface from them. The figures are rougher than with LiDAR, and the app says so before you start.

Three things help a camera-only scan:

• Good light. The camera needs to see the surface clearly.
• A slow walk. Sharp photographs match up; blurred ones do not.
• Material with some texture. Wet or plain material gives the photographs little to match on.

Either way, every scan reports its own evidence: how much of the pile was measured, how much was filled in, and how well the ground under it fitted. Stockpile needs iOS or iPadOS 17 or later.

What about Android?

Very few Android phones have a LiDAR scanner, so the Android version of Stockpile is built around the camera. It follows soon after the iPhone launch.