About Accelerometer in iPhone ?

[Ananias]

hello,

I have an Apple's iPhone and recently I came across a feature called Accelerometer. Since I was completely unaware about this feature, I did not tried using it. I want to know about this feature - Accelerometer in iPhone.
Can anybody help me providing the information regarding this.....

thanks

[Regina]

Accelerometer is one of the famous features of the iPhone. This feature can detect whether the gadget is at the horizontal or vertical position. The original purpose of this feature is to make the phone automatically change the screen orientation according to the position of the phone.

Somewhere in the path of iPhone software development, Apple opened its door and invited programmers to create applications for the iPhone. People began to create applications (mostly games) using the accelerometer feature. Users then could control the movements of the game character just by slightly tilting the position of the phone.

[Pugsly]

Accelerometer technology was first introduced by Apple to its laptop products (iBooks and Powerbooks) around March 2005 - way before iPhone’s first “public appearance” in January 2007. However, the Accelerometer feature on Apple laptops goes under a different name: Sudden Motion Sensor (SMS).

This feature is built to protect the hard drive and all the data inside by automatically locking the hard disk if it detects sudden physical position change – something like “heavily bumped”, “dropped”, ‘thrown”, and such. You get the idea.

Now, every Mac laptop (Macbook, Macbook Air, and Macbook Pro) are equipped with the SMS feature. Yet, there are only a few applications developed to utilize this feature. Most are just for fun, some are even completely useless, but there are also SMS-based applications that are actually useful.

[Bon-Z]

Accelerometers are increasingly being incorporated into personal electronic devices. Some smartphones and personal digital assistants contain accelerometers for user interface control. Prominent examples include the Nokia N95, Nokia 5800, Sony Ericsson W910i, the forthcoming Palm Pre, Blackberry Storm, HTC Touch Diamond, Apple iPhone, the Apple iPod Nano 4G and the Google G1.

Gaming devices like the Wii Remote for Nintendo's Wii game console contains a three-axis accelerometer from Analog Devices to sense movement which complements its pointer functionality. This provides more realistic game control.

Many laptops feature an accelerometer, such as Lenovo's (formerly IBM's) Active Protection System, and Apple's Sudden Motion Sensor, which is used to detect drops. If a drop is detected, the heads of the hard disk are parked to avoid data loss by the ensuing shock.

A number of modern notebook computers feature accelerometers to automatically align the screen depending on the direction the device is held, i.e. switching between portrait and landscape modes. This feature is relevant in Tablet PCs and some smartphones and digital cameras.