Some of you may have heard the reports crawling across the internet about iPhone 5s sensors being inaccurate. Well, if you have tested yours out and found that your iPhone 5s too is inaccurate, you are clearly not alone.
According to a report, it seems that the reason this could be is because of a supplier change for Apple’s accelerometer. Apple’s supplier for a while now has been STMicroelectronics, however as you can see on Chipworks’s image above, Bosch is the company that has been chosen to manufacture the iPhone 5s’s accelerometer. Well, this is where we find the problem, according to RealityCap:
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.
Now, a software update could fix this, so if Apple does go ahead and release iOS 7.1 next week at its October 22nd event, then we could see some correction to the sensors. This is the first part of its kind to make it into the iPhone from Bosch, so it will be interesting to see if Apple continues to choose it as a supplier in future iPhones.
Of course, seeing that this is something that should be fixed through a software update, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal if Apple does do that.
What do you think? Have you been having issues with the iPhone 5s sensors? Have you noticed it on other devices? Let us know in the comments
