The Galaxy S5 does not have temperature or humidity sensors(opensignal.com) |
The Galaxy S5 does not have temperature or humidity sensors(opensignal.com) |
Obviously Samsung is thinking from a consumer prospective, but still very disappointing.
Are temperature and humidity really that useful? I know many Android phones have had them, but have they really be used? Do they really add much to the device?
On a second note I produce an app (http://www.ullrlabs.com) for avalanche danger evaluation and knowing your ambient air temperature is one factor which is helpful in that process. Though I haven't yet tried to read that value on android phones for the app.
[1]See pressure altimeter calibration equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altimeter
In the short term these new sensors will provide more benefits to the consumer, but to the majority they will be something you use 1 or 2 times then forget about.
If temperature were useful, then humidity would be as well because then you could calculate local humidex.
Wait, what? Samsung is trying to make majority of customers happy and that's disappointing? This is what you are saying?
If you give me a new sensor, I might not have any ideas on how to make it useful, but if one developer has one good idea, that benefits me.
I think though, this gets to the heart of the problem with Samsung. They throw a lot of shit at the wall with no care for design or even how the thing is supposed to be lived with.
(FWIW, I think LG, Nokia and HTC are doing decent work in mobile.)
Part of our project is to inform users about how carriers are performing, but also to inform carriers how they're performing so that they can improve their service for their users. We use our data to independently regulate the carrier market, from both the supply and demand sides as we think this is the best way to help effect much-needed improvement. We sell to operators so that we don't have to charge consumers or show them annoying in-app ads!
Internal component temperature measurement isn't something you can get rid of, it's critical to the phone.
These are usually not accessible to applications since they (by design) do not report the ambient room temperature.
However, with the phone nearly always being transported so close to the body I really don’t see it being useful.
That's why I prefer pressureNET to opensignal. Also pressureNET is actually open source, unlike opensignal which sells all your smartphone/personal data to anyone who wants it.
We have an algorithm in WeatherSignal that tries to determine whether users are indoors or outdoors - there's a roof icon that appears or disappears, try it, it's pretty accurate during the day time.
WeatherSignal project is basically funded by OpenSignal sales, we sell to carriers and regulators -- who can act on the data to improve service.
(I'm James Robinson, a co-founder of OpenSignal/WeatherSignal)
"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." -- Henry Ford
Is the incrimental marginal cost of including the sensor low enough that the improvements in weather forcasting will be demananded by consumers?
I dont believe the target demographic of samsung is swayed towards their products by an additional 5 even 10 degrees of weather accuracy. But i have no data to back this up.
A number of papers have been published since as that work has continued. So we know that surface pressure data is useful on a large scale; is it useful on a micro- or mesoscale? A few researchers are actively writing and publishing papers on this topic. Cliff Mass at the University of Washington, along with his colleagues and students, are leading the charge.
https://ams.confex.com/ams/94Annual/webprogram/Paper236282.h...