How does my phone step counter work?

[annedonnelly]

No idea but when we were involved in a fitness campaign at work we all wore a dedicated step counter. It did register something while cycling but there was a conversion factor they applied to allow for each mile cycled. With cycling to/from work & and a walk at lunchtime I was way ahead of the recommended 10,000 steps per day.

 

[Fnaar]

Careful if it's a Huawei it could be spying on you and sending the data back to China.

There's a new Geordie phone coming out, called the 'Howaay;

 

[Racing roadkill]

There's a new Geordie phone coming out, called the 'Howaay;

I thought it was the ‘why aye phone 11’

 

[Cycleops]

I thought it was the ‘why aye phone 11’

No, its going to be 'The Likely Phone'.

 

[Nigel-YZ1]

It measures linear distance with GPS and divides by step length set in preferences.

 

[twentysix by twentyfive]

AFAIK only 5 Steps

 

[classic33]

AFAIK only 5 Steps

View attachment 452351

Thought there were only

View: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=WaVSkh5Hy-U

 

[Salad Dodger]

The microphone in the phone is permanently on, and is listening out for your footsteps. It counts them.
The clever part is that it can tell, through an algorithm, when you are walking in slippers, socks or even bare feet, and adds those steps into the daily count, too.
I read that the difficult part for the makers was getting the phone to continue counting the correct number of steps, whilst the phone was being used to take or make calls at the same time as the user was walking. They solved it with some sort of nanotech crystal on the phone's motherboard, that splits the signal from the microphone into two.