RealityCap reveals that the phone’s accelerometer could have a design flaw

Oct 17, 2013 09:58 GMT  ·  By
iPhone 4s and iPhone 5s placed on a flat surface, with the 5s showing an elevation difference of four degrees
   iPhone 4s and iPhone 5s placed on a flat surface, with the 5s showing an elevation difference of four degrees

Reports are trickling in regarding a potential flaw with the sensors inside the iPhone 5s, including the accelerometer and the gyroscope, and now one company claims to have found the problem.

To cut a long story short, it appears that a sensor made by Bosch Sensortech has a design flaw, causing software applications, like racing games, to respond inaccurately to user input.

“This is where we find the problem: the typical bias for the ST part is +/- 20mg, while the Bosch part lists +/-95mg. This almost 5x greater offset range is confirmed by our measurements, and is absolutely consistent with the failures being reported by users and the media. Specifically, a +/- 20mg offset range would translate to around a +/-1 degree accuracy range in tilt detection, and a +/-95mg offset translates to +/-5 degrees in tilt,” says RealityCap.

According to Eagle Jones, PhD, CEO, RealityCap, Apple could easily address this issue by releasing a firmware update that forces the sensors to recalibrate and make up for the bias error by doing a simple subtraction.