New Versions of Android Support Hardware Barometers, the Motorola Xoom has One Inside
The list of sensors and gizmos and odds and ends inside of mobile devices keeps growing, and the latest addition might have you scratching your head in terms of usefulness. It looks like Android 2.3 and higher supports a hardware barometer, and the Motorola Xoom tablet with Honeycomb (3.0) features one inside. The use isn’t immediately clear, but let’s speculate.
The most obvious reason for a barometer would be to provide accurate, on-location weather data. While that’s all good and well, the way developers manipulate and use this data in future apps could prove its true ability. We’re thinking something along the lines of apps that take external weather data and use it to manipulate various parameters in the same way a light sensor can help determine when to automatically adjust screen brightness. What sort of things would a barometer affect? We’ll wait for the developers to answer that one.
[via Gizmodo]