Entries tagged with “accelerometer” from WIRELESS AND MOBILE NEWS

Because acclerometers, enable smartphones like the BlackBerry Storm, iPhone and Palm Pre, sense rotation and therefore automatically rotate the screen they are expected to appear in one-third of mobile phones shipped next year, according to iSuppli Corp.

While few consumers know what accelerometers are, they do know that when they turn their iPhones to the side, their screens automatically adjust from portrait to landscape view, or that when they shake their handsets they can roll a pair of virtual dice in a game of chance. With their capability to detect and measure motion, accelerometers are the critical enablers of these features, which are an essential element of what makes these smart phones so popular. These capabilities now are spreading beyond smart phones to other types of handsets."

Beyond game play and screen orientation, the most popular uses for 3-axis MEMS accelerometer motion sensors in phones include power management and shake modes for control of tracks in music phones, context awareness and pedometers.

Seven semiconductor manufacturers have announced their commitment to the introduction of Universal Flash Storage (UFS) -- a new industry specification for removable memory cards and embedded memory chip products for use in next-generation mobile devices, personal media players, and digital cameras.  The standard is being developed by the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association, which creates open standards for the semiconductor industry.

UFS promises to offer high-speed access to large multimedia files, while consuming less power in consumer electronic devices. UFS's performance is expected to be much higher than is offered today by flash cards. The next-generation flash memory specification is expected to be completed in the first half of 2009, with a draft specification available in the first half of 2008.