Now, iPhone 4 applications and games can also benefit from their superb accuracy. The teardown covers not only the iPhone 4's gyroscope, but vibrational gyroscopes in general. We tried our best to explain how vibrational gyroscopes function and have documented their internals at a microscopic level.
Apple failed this time, but it will try again and likely succeed next time. Realme 8i review: An affordable phone with a Hz screen and good battery life. Are free phone deals really free or too good to be true? App Annie predicts TikTok to reach 1. Apple's new gyro not only beat other smartphone makers to market, but also premiered ahead of motion-based controls on dedicated gaming devices. Nintendo won't bring accelerometer and gyro support to its new Nintendo 3DS until March Sony's PSP Go, released last fall, has neither type of motion sensor built in and has announced no plans to add any while it can theoretically be used with Sony's SIXAXIS controller for the PS3, nobody is supporting that sort of thing today, nor does it make much sense for a handheld device to use a separate controller.
The iPhone 4's gyro introduction resonated with new announcements at E3 related to the leading video game console vendors, each of whom were demonstrating their own new motion-based gaming technologies for their gaming consoles.
In video game consoles, accelerometer-based motion control was pioneered by Nintendo, which around bought up patents from Gyration pertaining to that company's motion sensing PC mice.
Five years later, the company had completed an innovative design for a one-handed controller using a 3-axis accelerometer paired with an IR camera designed to locate itself in space using a stationary "sensor bar," which enables the Wii Remote to determine where it is being pointed. The company first planned to use the new controller to extend the lifespan of the GameCube, but after that console largely failed as a product due to being branded as a toy for children, the new controller was used to launch the Revolution console, later renamed Wii.
Motion-based controls have defined the Wii gaming experience. Just months after the announcement of Nintendo's Wii motion-based "Wii Remote," Sony rushed its own SIXAXIS controller to market for the PS3, although fewer PS3 titles have made much use of its motion-sensing controller; most PS3 games have been more conventional button-oriented titles as opposed to the Wii where motion-based control is a major feature of the platform.
Last summer, Nintendo released the Wii MotionPlus, an add-on device that plugs into the Wii Remote and adds a 3-axis gyroscope to enable much greater positioning accuracy to the controller. Adding the MotionPlus gyro provides sensitivity for slight degrees of motion along six axes for determining precisely where the controller is in space.
In the last week, Microsoft and Sony both demonstrated new camera-based motion detection features, the Xbox Kinect and and Playstation Move. Kinect is entirely camera and mic based, scanning the user's full body motions, while Move uses motion based controllers like the Wii Remote with MotionPlus in addition to a magnetometer and camera sensing LED sphere that are all combined to determine the location and movement of the controllers in the user's hands.
Clearly, the whole industry thinks that motion-based gaming is a big deal. On page 4 of 4: Gyro motion extends Apple's lead mobile games. By being first to incorporate motion controls in a mobile device for gaming and other uses, Apple is signaling its intention to not just make its iOS platform a suitable performer for casual games, but to instead increase its vast gaming lead over other smartphone platforms while also outpacing the interactivity of dedicated game devices, essentially beating Nintendo at its own game in the mobile realm.
The problem with adding advanced features to a gaming platform is that historically it's appeared difficult to sell consumers those additional add-on devices. By building gyro support into iPhone 4 and almost certainly the iPod touch 4 this fall Apple will rapidly create a large installed base of tens of millions of gyro-ready iOS devices for developers to target. Many games designed to take advantage of gyro data in CoreMotion will be able to degrade gracefully to support less accurate 3-axis control on earlier iPhone and iPod touch devices, just as iOS' Core Location bridges the hardware gap between devices that have GPS and those that can only use WiFi triangulation for positioning.
The new gyro is also an example of how Apple can outpace rival platforms that advertise "openness" as a feature over integration; Google won't be able to move its Android partners to add gyros to all their phones immediately, nor will the company be very interested in developing a sophisticated new motion API in Android, given that such a feature won't do much to help the company sell more ads. Microsoft won't be adding gyro support to Windows Phone 7 from the start, and Symbian's installed base is so large that adding gyros to new phones won't really result in an addressable market for gyro-based games, given the already limited potential for sophisticated Symbian titles right now.
Along with RIM and HP, all of these vendors have plenty of far more serious problems to address first, starting with basic user interface upgrades that make them comparable to the iOS platform; basic support for new tablet devices; and a business model that can sustain app development in the first place.
Once you've got your signals, you need to convert them into information. The gyroscope can distinguish movement with an accuracy of up to 2, degrees per second - over times more detailed than the movement of the second hand on a clock.
Now we're down to nanotechnology. Though not part of the iPhone 4, it shows the detail. The proof masses are on the right and left of the die. More nanotechnology: MEMS gyroscopes can feature amazing oscillator designs, such as this Kionix gyroscope. You'd never see it because it's under a dust cover - but that's good, because on this scale a single human hair micron thick would ruin its functionality.
MEMS devices require extremely complicated and sensitive manufacturing procedures to produce the kind of accuracy needed for reliable sensors. Most MEMS devices require a combination of deposition of a film layer, patterning to mask off areas of the deposited film to remain after etching, and etching to remove excess film to achieve the final product. MEMS gyroscopes can feature awesome oscillator designs, such as this Kionix gyroscope.
This kind of beauty is invisible to the naked eye, buried deep beneath a black cover. The micron bars on the images give a sense of their diminutive scale.
The thickness of the oscillator shown in the second picture is about a quarter the diameter of the average human hair, or about three red blood cells placed side by side. An ASIC - which converts the raw signals of the oscillator - is stacked on top of the oscillator itself, and the two are wire-bonded together for signal transfer. This entire unit is completely sealed inside the plastic outer package. The wire bonds connect the dies both together and to the ball grid array.
Stacking dies allows chip manufacturers to pack more functionality on the same footprint. This is especially important in mobile devices such as the iPhone 4, where board space is minimal. A great deal of engineering goes into the design, manufacture, and implementation of MEMS devices.
MEMS devices truly bridge the gap between electrical and mechanical engineering, and their design involves contributions from industrial, materials, mechanical, electrical, chemical, computer, and software engineers. A big thanks to Chipworks for providing the amazing images used in this teardown!
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