When the Samsung Galaxy Nexus was revealed earlier this week, it had one interesting feature that was mentioned but not discussed: its onboard barometer. Now you might be wondering; what could a phone possibly do with information about the air pressure? To provide you with more accurate weather info? Well, it turns out the answer is simpler than we thought.
As you all know, the barometer is used to determine air pressure, and air pressure is also affected by how high we are above sea level, which in turn can give us our altitude. Seeing how a GPS lock requires our latitude, longitude and altitude, having an onboard barometer to provide the altitude can result in a faster and more accurate GPS lock.
And in case you didn’t know, the Motorola Xoom tablet also features a barometer for this very same purpose, though it wasn’t really discussed before. The Galaxy Nexus will be the first Android phone to have this sensor. You can read up more about it here.