14 DAY TRIAL // With the air pollution increasing all over the world, Apple is currently exploring ways to use an iPhone to actually measure the air quality using a local implementation.
In other words, you’d no longer have to rely on services connected to the Internet to determine the air quality but use an iPhone to measure it in any location.
A patent spotted by AI and called “Particulate matter sensors for portable electronic devices” describes how the iPhone could be equipped with three lasers that would be part of a complex configuration specifically supposed to help determine the air quality.
Apple applied for the patent in March this year, and it was granted the application on September 29.
While the system itself is rather complex and relies on the concept of self-mixing interferometry, the abstract section of the patent provides us with a closer look at how everything is supposed to work.
Still in patent stage, of course
“Aspects of the subject technology relate to particulate matter sensors for electronic devices. A particulate matter sensor may include three lasers, three total-internal-reflection lenses, and three detectors for detecting changes in the operation of the three lasers due to the principles of self-mixing interferometry,” the patent reads.
“The three total-internal-reflection lenses may use internally reflective surfaces to tilt the three beams into three corresponding directions that form an orthogonal basis in the three dimensional space, so that a gas flow speed can be determined while maintaining a small, modular form factor for implementation of the sensor in portable electronic devices.”
Needless to say, this idea is still in patent stage at this point, so it could take a while until it makes it production, if this ever happens in the first place. For now, it’s pretty clear that Apple is exploring other ways to improve the iPhone, though simply applied for a patent doesn’t mean the mass production is planned too.