14 DAY TRIAL // Analyst Sun Chang Xu reported this weekend on her Weibo account that Apple would have a bunch of new sensors implemented in its upcoming smartphone, allowing customers to get readings like atmospheric pressure, humidity, and temperature.
Highlighted by G for Games, Sun Chang Xu’s report cites sources who are familiar with Apple’s plans as saying that “Apple will catch up in the ‘sensors department,’ as the iPhone 6 will feature pressure, temperature and humidity sensors.”
ESM-China’s analyst doesn’t say this but she is obviously referring to atmospheric pressure, not blood pressure (a feature of the upcoming iWatch).
Apple has been hiring sensor experts like crazy in the past few months, and there’s a good chance some of them are working on the iPhone 6, not (just) the iWatch.
Although it’s the iWatch that is said to pack the newest and most exciting sensors, iPhones have gradually incorporated at least one extra sensor with each passing generation. If anything, the iPhone 6 will probably have a lot more sensors than the iWatch (not necessarily the same ones).
While the iPhone 6 will apparently boast these weather sensors, the iWatch will sport technologies that can read a person’s blood pressure, hydration levels, sleep patterns, perhaps even glucose levels (according to some rumors).
It’s certainly an interesting prospect, and even more so considering that Apple has a Healthbook app planned for both devices to communicate with one another, to allow a person to keep track of their health status, both on iPhone and on iWatch.
In case you’re wondering why Apple feels that an atmospheric pressure sensor is necessary in the iPhone 6, there have been numerous studies in medical meteorology that indicate that “abrupt daily variations in the atmospheric pressure (AP) are important meteorotropic factor rendering adverse effects on health and different kind of human activity,” according to hindawi.com.
Scientists believe that “insufficient attention is paid to the other bioeffective physical characteristics of AP.”
According to a whitepaper on the effects of atmospheric pressure fluctuations on the human body, “The important feature of the APF is that they penetrate buildings and, therefore, could be responsible for weather sensitivity symptoms not only outdoors, but also indoors.”
“Long ago [P.G.] Mezernitsky emphasized that rapid ‘micropulsations’ of atmospheric pressure are capable of influencing human organisms in the worst way,” the paper adds. “The adverse effects of infrasonic waves, generated by severe storm activity on selected kinds of human behaviour, particularly the increase in the automobile accidents reported Green and Dunn.”