Monthly Archives: May 2011

Google announced plans for Ice Cream Sandwich with the ambitious but laudable goal of reducing fragmentation: one OS to rule them all, so to speak. Unifying the user experience among smart phones, tablets and televisions is certainly a goal we heartily support. However, Ice Cream Sandwich will only be a start. Android platforms will still be fragmented by how they integrate sensors for various implementations. For example, sensors differ in resolution, sensitivity, repeatability, bandwidth, and sampling rate. Fragmentation in Android platforms is growing as Android supports more sensor types. Sensor components in a phone, for example, affect whether an app requiring sensors runs in a platform as the developer intended. The table below shows the common sensor types that smart … Continue reading →

The most common questions we hear from mobile applications developers are, “how good are the sensors on my phone.” This is article one of a series that, together, provide a framework to understand sensor performance. In order to accurately measure a phenomenon in the physical world, sensors need to be calibrated. Sensor calibration should not be just a one-time event performed in the factory. How well a suite of sensors perform for an application is contingent on maintaining good calibration. First, let us explain why sensors go out of calibration. Sometimes, calibration expires simply because the environment has changed. For example, the lithium-ion battery in the phone is a magnetic device. Its magnetic alignment can change over time and cause … Continue reading →