The next iPhones were announced and sold out (just as Apple planned), the fanbois lined up, camped out, and stopped mocking big phones.
A couple people noticed it came equipped with a barometer. Yawn. Android had them for years, nobody cares.
Well one guy does care. He is Cliff Mass, of the Weather Blog. Why is Cliff so excited:
Because they offer the chance to get a extraordinary density of pressure observations, which provides the potential to describe small scale atmospheric structures. Structures we need to know about if we are to predict key weather features like strong thunderstorms.
To forecast fine-scale weather features (like thunderstorms), you need a fine-scale description of the atmosphere, and the current observational network is often insufficient. We need millions of observations per hour over the U.S. to do the job.
But collecting pressure with current meteorological technology is too expensive, and too sparsely deployed. Even throwing in the rather capable but utterly ignored personal weather stations, there just isn't enough density to allow fine grained forecasts or alerts.
Cliff Mass notes that Android, and soon iPhone, pressure readings are being collected by PressureNet an open source from a project by Cumulonimbus available on GitHub. These anonymous readings from Android devices are collected, and provided to weather researchers. An iPhone app is in the works.
The app is free for Android users, and the iPhone version is under development.
There are other barometer apps available, but none of them do anything other than provide you with a barometer reading, or graph, which, unless you are something of a weather geek, (or prone to weather induced headaches), serve only a marginal interest. Pressurenet can run quietly with no user intervention, or it can feed your geek with regional readings in a zoom-able map. The battery usage is low, and you can launch it and forget it on your barometer equipped phone.
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 22 2014, @09:51PM
Gawd. I can't wait until Jolla brings out a great phablet running Sailfish. Especially if they ever wind up with enough money to hire the lawyers essential to them for marketing in North America where they'll need to be locking horns consistently with the legal departments of Apple and Google, etc.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Nerdfest on Wednesday October 22 2014, @10:36PM
I may be mistaken, but I don't think Google has ever sues anyone for patent infringement that did not sue them first.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 22 2014, @11:02PM
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:13AM
Why are we talking about Jolla, and what does it have to do with this issue?
It doesn't even have a barometer.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday October 22 2014, @09:59PM
I like th idea of improving the weather forecast (required in the midwest, pretty useless in SoCal)
But can I please get a decent smartphone without all the niche/gadget sensors but with good sound, good screen, and a week of battery time?
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Wednesday October 22 2014, @10:09PM
Yes here it is [google.com], I'm using one now.
It even has an SOS button, can you believe it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @12:05AM
No. Not unless you have a way around physics. Besides these sensors draw very little power compared to the cellular/wifi modems, CPU and GPU in the SoC and display.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @07:32PM
Sure you can.
I run an S3 with a "Zero Lemon" extended battery. The phone is now 12mm thick which is fine for my (large) hands. I've also got Cyanogenmod on there stripped of everything I don't want. I get 5 days using it hard (GPS, WiFi on 24/7 video.....) and up to 8 days if in anyway careful.
You can't, but only because of fashion.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:44AM
No, you can't have a week of battery time with a smartphone, until you can figure out how to develop Sarium Krellide batteries.
You just can't get the features people want (good screen as you want, fast enough CPU to run the apps people demand), in a typical smartphone size (rather than a giant 10-pound brick), with battery life that long with today's battery tech.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday October 23 2014, @06:49AM
Actually, you can. The problem is the market size, apparently.
My current Samsung Galaxy Stratosphere 2 [sic] smartphone includes a slider keyboard and goes 3 days between charges.
Remove the slider, the useless gadgets, put in the newest processor (not at top speed), fill the void plus and extra 5 mm with battery (three times more), and it would last over a week.
I don't need a 550 PPI 2xHD screen and the resulting GPU needs, I barely need 3.7 or 4 inches at 720p...ish
(Score: 2, Offtopic) by c0lo on Wednesday October 22 2014, @10:04PM
The Weather Channel will be delighted [businessweek.com], can sell more adds:
(for once, I might not think ads are so despicable if interpreting them as a "warning: ticks are hatching, make sure you have insecticide")
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @08:33AM
Since "know where you are" is exactly the definition of tracking, it must be the "as person" part which is negated. Yeah, right, they don't consider you as person, they just consider you as target.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday October 22 2014, @10:44PM
It's not just weather all these sensors are useful for. There are a couple of projects that use them for detecting cosmic rays:
DECO [wisc.edu]
Crayfis [uci.edu]
These are only available for Android currently of course.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Wednesday October 22 2014, @11:40PM
Most people spend most of their time indoors. In many cases that is inside of office buildings with central AC. The air pressure within those buildings is affected by the A/C cycle and is generally a bit higher than outdoors. The same reasoning applies to a car. Air pressure is also a function of elevation; but at least that can be compensated for, as long as the GPS in the phone gives a 3D fix. Again, that is far from being guaranteed indoors.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @12:51AM
On the home page of this app, they address the issue of being in a building.
Unless you are in one of those buildings held up by air pressure, like the old Metrodome in Minnesota, the pressure differential from air conditioning is negligible. Air is recirculated, not blown into the building, as that would be wasteful of energy trying to inflate a building.
Any place you don't feel a significant breeze standing in an exterior doorway or in front of an open window is essentially at the ambient exterior pressure. In any case and difference in pressure is probably within the error noise of the sensor.
You could check for yourself how much difference being in a building makes, by just Loading the app, check the pressure, then step outside and check again.
In cars, they could just have the app not report readings when the GPS is changing greater than 5mph. But I don't know if they have done that.
They DO have the ability to correct for altitude. (The correction factor is 1 millibar for each 8 meters of altitude gain). I suspect there might be a bit of variability in that between devices. I suppose they could throw out the -3 and +3 standard deviations use the rest.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday October 23 2014, @12:53AM
Oh, forgot to mention...
I wonder if they aren't more interested in the rate of change, and are not too worried about the difference in pressure between devices?
If all the reports to the south of you are dropping like a rock, it probably doesn't matter too much if some read 5mbars higher than others.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @02:36AM
It would be interesting to get a bunch of guys with the "same" equipment together in 1 location and see how much deviation there is between their units' readings.
A simple 2-point calibration/verification:
Have them gather on a day when it looks like the bottom is going to drop out and repeat this again on a day when there's not a cloud in the sky.
You'll need 1 guy with an instrument which has a recent calibration traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:45AM
What is with the Apple hate in the first sentence? Totally childish and unnecessary.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:37AM
Flying cars so we can get pressure readings at multiple altitudes as well.
In all seriousness, though, when it comes to predicting the weather, does knowing air pressure differences at various altitudes not add that much over knowing it at ground level? In comparison, it seems like ground-level readings wouldn't contribute enough to be meaningful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by aristarchus on Thursday October 23 2014, @05:52AM
Had no idea what this was about from the title. Pressure? Market pressure? Gravitational pressure of an iPhone6 on your ear? Oh, barometers! Why didn't you just say so? (Wait, there is a barometer in my Android phone? Why? Won't this attract low pressure cells, either tornados or hurricanes? Or Sharknados!! ARG! Run for the Beverly Hills!)
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday October 23 2014, @11:02AM
If everyone has a smartphone with a barometer, that's going to revolutionize the old question about how to measure the height of a building using only a barometer.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 3, Funny) by TK on Thursday October 23 2014, @01:46PM
Measure the height of the building in lengths of barometers by flipping it end over end for the entire height of the building.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum