Next-gen iPhone to sport MEMS gyroscope?

Taiwanese manufacturing news sources claim that Nintendo's Wii-style advanced motion-sensing abilities and functionality is coming to the iPhone in 2009.

Next-generation smartphones from the like of Apple, Nokia, Samsung Electronics, Motorola, LG Electronics, Sony Ericsson will all make use of MEMS gyroscopes reports DigiTimes, a daily news source about Asia's IT industry.


Nintendo's Wii MotionPlus accessory currently uses a form of MEMS gyroscope that can determine rotational motion; the technology is also used in image stabilising systems in digital photography plus a form of the technology is used in Segway transporters.

What is less clear is how the technology would be put to effective use in mobile phones, although the iPhone's accelerometer is being used in increasingly complex ways by applications and games. It is possible that the gyroscopic sensor will be used to help stabalize image shots taken with the cameras found on mobile phones.

DigiTimes, cites unnamed market sources, who claim Apple and others will add MEMS gyroscopes next year to their products to make mobile devices appeal to more consumers.

With continuing efforts to reduce their production costs, makers will be able to turn out MEMS gyroscopes that will account for approximately only 3 per cent of the entire production costs of smartphone manufacturing, the sources indicated.

Handset vendors, which have already incorporated MEMS G-sensors into smartphones, will be more willing to add MEMS gyroscopes into their mobile devices reports DigiTimes unnamed sources , especially once prices drop to more affordable levels.

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