Send Me to Heaven

Re:Send Me to Heaven by blevinstein on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:27PM (#38688551)

Can anybody understand how it detects cheating (throwing your phone off a tall building)?

Assuming it's just using the accelerometer to detect freefall, is there any way to distinguish ascent and descent? GPS is probably too inaccurate and too high-latency to assist here.

Perhaps it can tell the difference between reaching terminal velocity and crashing into the ground, and it penalizes the former?

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Re:Send Me to Heaven by yreg on Monday December 18, 2023 @08:12PM (#38690579)

I think we need to wait for phones with air pressure sensors.

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Re:Send Me to Heaven by extraduder_ire on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @06:44AM (#38694435)

There have been a few of those already, for at least a decade. IIRC, there was some weather app that crowdsourced readings from users with certain motorola phones and gave shockingly granular weather.

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Re:Send Me to Heaven by HALtheWise on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:36PM (#38688681)

Dropping a phone will result in an immediate change from normal 1g gravity to freefall. Throwing it will involve a brief spike of high-g acceleration in between.

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Re:Send Me to Heaven by MrDresden on Monday December 18, 2023 @04:35PM (#38688658)

First guess would be that there isn't a deceleration curve when the phone is dropped, like there would be when thrown up.

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Re:Send Me to Heaven by ilyagr on Tuesday December 19, 2023 @05:05PM (#38702388)

Good question! I wonder if it can detect friction against air.

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