Learn About The Sensors Used In Smartphones (Very Easy Language)

There is at least one new product in technology market every day. And also they have a huge demand among the customers. Smart phone is on top of them, there is no question about that. So the companies are trying to add new, wanted and uncommon features every day. One of them is Sensor. There are different type of sensors are present in a smart phone. Let us get to know and understand those sensor and their function in a smart phone. Okay let us start.

1. ACCELEROMETER

Accelerometer is a hardware based sensor. It is actually a micro mechanical device that can measure the Position, Speed type, Frequency, Acceleration etc of a device. There basic two types of Accelerometer. One is Two-dimensional another is Three-dimensional. The Three-dimensional Accelerometer is the strongest between them. It can understand the Orientation of the phone very easily. So when the Accelerometer is on and you bend your phone like ‘Landscape’ or ‘Portrait’ the Accelerometer will change your screen orientation based on that. 

Sometimes we do need to change the orientation of our phone for good. For Web Browsing, Watching Video/Movie, Playing Video Game, Read Something or Texting someone we feel comfy with the Landscape view rather than Portrait. With the help of Accelerometer we can easily switch between them. Accelerometer has some other application for which it is very popular like there are some music players with the feature of shake to change song, there are some games that can be controlled by only tilting our phones and also there is another feature like Flip to Mute etc. So the main concern is Accelerometer can understand the orientation of the phone and helps phone to adjust with the change of the orientation of the phone.

2. AMBIENT LIGHT SENSOR

 Ambient light sensor is also a hardware based sensor. This sensor is used in smart phones or in tabloid PC to adjust brightness. Different types of photo cells those are highly sensitive to light are used to construct this sensor. It can sense the presence of light around you, like if is in a very dark room it will automatically increase the brightness of your phone.

Again when you are in very bright environment, like sunlight at day, it will automatically decrease your phone brightness so you can watch your display very clearly. It also helps saving battery life. The devices with auto brightness option, every one of them uses Ambient light sensor.

3. PROXIMITY SENSOR 

Proximity Sensor is a very important sensor for smart phones. It is also a hardware based sensor. It can sense and detect the distance of the phone from some substance. For an example, it can measure the distance of your phone from your body. When you take your phone too much close to your ear, it automatically the display light of your phone, so it saves your battery life time.

If you touch the screen accidentally in those times, nothing will happen. Like if your display does not turn off touch from your ear might cut the call, but it won’t happen if the Proximity Sensor is on. So it will prevent phone to do any unnecessary task while you are talking. When you remove your phone from your ear it will automatically turn your display on. How cool is that?

4. COMPASS/MAGNETOMETER/MAGNETIC SENSOR

Compass or the Magnetic Sensor is related to the Earth’s Poles. It uses one type of Magnet in this Sensor that acts with the Earth’s Magnetic field and shows the direction. It is used mainly for navigation purpose but it also can detect Metal and not very accurately though, it can be used as metal detector and there are some apps in the Android Market. It is very rare in cheap smart phones but the phone comes with navigation feature uses this sensor. Samsung Galaxy Y Duos have this feature.

5. GYROSCOPE

The device that can detect the position or the measurement of a substance by angular acceleration of the device is called gyroscope. The Gyroscope used in smart phones measures the diagonal speed of every axis of the device. In other word it measures how quickly a substance can turn diagonally. 

When Accelerometer and Gyroscope work together in a smart phone they can sense motion in all 6 axis and gives much more accurate result than that of Accelerometer alone. As applying both of them in one device is costly, that’s why cheap mobile does not use them. As much as I know, iPhone 4 device had first ever built-in Gyroscope.

Now you may ask where Motion Sensor is. Well Motion Sensor is not a single sensor. Accelerometer, Proximity Sensor, Gyroscope etc. all are Motion Sensor.

N.B. : There are other sensors present now a days like Thermal Sensor, Back Illuminated Sensor etc. but they are not widely used so I just skipped them.

Source: Various Article found by searching Google