Cell phones trends

Last week in our Mobile Web Meets Internet of Things series, we looked at barcode scanning and RFID in the next generation iPhone. We expect to see Apple and Android battling it out for both barcodeand RFID supremacy this year.

Another key technology in the Internet of Things - where everyday objects are endowed with Internet connectivity - is sensors. In fact we've seen the most activity sofar in the Internet of Things from sensor data. So in this post we explore how mobile phones and sensors are mixing; and what to expect in 2012.


RWW's Mobile Web Meets Internet of ThingsSeries: 1.Mobile Apps For Barcode Scanning
2.iPhone as RFID Tag & Reader
3.Sensors & Mobile Phones
4.Mobile Phone as Proximity Sensor

Last year we wrote a lot about sensors and discovered that thereare two common scenarios for sensors + mobile phones:

1) Everyday objects with sensors pumping out data on things like temperature, noise and activity; the mobile phone reads and analyzes thisdata.

2) The phone is used as a sensor itself. For example the iPhone has a built-in accelerometer, which is basically a motion detector. This is used for game control and also for re-sizing youriPhone display from portrait to landscape. The iPhone also has a microphone (which can be used as a noise sensor), a proximity sensor, and an ambient light sensor.


iPhone as Sensor

A goodexample of scenario 2 is WideNoise, an iPhone application that samples decibel noise levels and displays the data on an interactive map. WideNoise is essentially a sound sensor, using the iPhone'smicrophone.

You can take a sound reading on WideNoise and, if you so desire, share that with the community. I must admit that I haven't found too much practical use for this app yet. However one of theuse cases cited is checking it when house-hunting, to assess the average noise levels of the neighborhood. It's one of those apps that will become more useful the more data is added to it by the...