ACTION-439: Draft use cases for proximity, ambient light, and ambient sound sensors.

Here are some thoughts around this, for Proximity.

People typically think about this sensor being related to putting your phone to your ear etc, but there are many other possible uses. But even in the "phone to ear" case, there are nice things that could be done, e.g.:

1) An app monitors the sensor and when it fires, the app issues some event to control devices in the user's environment, for example when listening to TV or music and the user gets a call, the TV/music audio is automatically muted as the app detects proximity.

2) An app detects proximity and suspends displayed element handling (e.g. buttons, mouse events) until the sensor returns to normal.

3) An app provides audio through the device speaker, until the user puts the phone to their ear, at which time the audio is automatically switched to the earpiece (this can also be simply a volume change upon the event if there is one speaker).

Bryan Sullivan | AT&T

Received on Wednesday, 3 August 2011 08:18:29 UTC