Gyroscope readout
The gyroscope measures how fast the phone is rotating, not which way it is facing. Many budget phones do not have one at all, and this is a quick way to find out.
| Sensor used | Gyroscope |
|---|---|
| Unit | Radians per second (rad/s), often shown as °/s |
| Useful range | Commonly up to about ±2000 °/s |
| Cannot do | Report absolute orientation on its own, or hold an angle without drifting |
The mechanism, not the marketing.
A vibrating structure inside the chip is deflected by the Coriolis effect when the phone rotates. That deflection is proportional to the rate of rotation, measured on three axes.
It reports angular velocity. Holding the phone still at an angle gives zero, because nothing is rotating — turning it quickly gives a large value whatever direction it ends up facing.
What a phone cannot do here.
- Integrating rotation rate to get an angle accumulates error, so an orientation derived from the gyroscope alone drifts away over seconds to minutes. Devices fuse it with the accelerometer and magnetometer to correct for this.
- Not every phone has one. Gyroscopes are frequently omitted from budget devices, which is why some games and VR apps refuse to run on them.
- A small zero-rate offset means a stationary phone may report a slow non-zero rotation.
Does my phone have a gyroscope?
Rotate the phone and watch the readout. If the values stay at zero however you turn it, the device most likely has no gyroscope and is reporting orientation from other sensors.
What is the difference from the accelerometer?
The accelerometer measures linear acceleration including gravity, so it knows which way is down. The gyroscope measures rotation rate, so it knows how fast you are turning.
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