How does a phone know which way it is facing?
Motion Detectives
How does a phone know which way it is facing?
Your phone knows which way is up. It knows when you flip it sideways. It even knows when you're spinning around in a circle. How does a rectangle of glass and metal figure all this out?
Inside your phone, buried under the screen and battery, sits a chip smaller than a grain of rice. Engineers call it an accelerometer. It's a motion detective, and its whole job is feeling which way gravity pulls.
