What a phone barometer is
A phone barometer is a tiny pressure sensor on the main board. Android lists it as a pressure sensor. Phone makers include it mainly to help with altitude: a faster GPS fix, and telling which floor of a building you are on. A barometer app reads the same sensor to show the air pressure around you and how it changes.
Phone pressure sensors are good at detecting change and less good at absolute calibration. The shape of the curve is reliable even when the absolute value sits a little off, which is fine for tracking trends.
How to check yours
- Install Barometer Reborn and open it. It detects the sensor on the first run. If the Air Pressure tab shows a data source credit under the title, the readings come from a weather service, which means no sensor was found. No credit line means your phone is measuring the pressure itself.
- Read the full spec sheet for your exact model, not the product family. Look for “barometer” or “pressure sensor” in the sensors list.
Check the exact model. Within one brand, and sometimes within one product family, some models have the sensor and cheaper variants do not.
Which phones usually have one
- Flagship Android phones often do. Google Pixel phones and Samsung’s Galaxy S and Note lines have carried one for years.
- Budget and many mid-range Android phones often do not. It is one of the first sensors left out to save cost.
- iPhones have had one since the iPhone 6. The iOS version of Barometer Reborn is in preparation and will use the weather service at launch rather than the iPhone’s own sensor.
No barometer? The app still works
Older versions of Barometer Reborn simply did not work on a phone without the sensor. That restriction is gone. On a phone without a barometer, the app fetches the pressure for your location from a weather service. The screens are the same, and a few things behave differently:
| With a barometer | Without a barometer | |
|---|---|---|
| Where the data comes from | The phone’s own sensor | A weather service, for your location |
| Works offline | Yes | No |
| Measurement interval | Every 15 minutes, measured by your phone | Set by the weather service |
| Where the history is stored | On the device only | On the server, per location |
| Alerts | Evaluated on the device | Evaluated on the server, delivered as a notification |
| Home screen widget | Yes | Yes |
Both need the location permission (“while using the app”). The full comparison, including iOS, is on the home page.
Why your reading differs from the weather report
Weather reports quote pressure converted to sea level. Your phone measures the raw pressure where it physically is, and pressure falls by roughly 1 hPa for every 8 metres of height. A third floor flat already reads lower than the street. Turn on the sea level display in the app and check the altitude stored for your place; the FAQ explains the rest.
