Smartphone vs. Real Meters for Sound and Light Measurement?

39 Comments

1. 2:17 Good smartphone programms can calibrated

2. Untrained listeners usually do need a 3dB difference to notice a change in sound level. But trained and practiced listeners can often discern small fractions of a decibel differences under good conditions.

3. Halogen color temperature also shifts with dimming, FYI!

4. DC to Daylight, why have they turned spectrum graph 180° ?

5. I hope you have a great new year with many more interesting discoveries!

6. Not all phones have accurate dB sound meter. My phone seems to be capped at like 85dB and the reading is very inaccurate. It only works well on certain models of cellphones. I have tested the lux meter, magnetic sensor, barometer, gyro, and accelerometer on my phone and they were pretty good though.

7. Smartphone did extremely well. I guess we take the sophisticated computers we carry around in our pockets for granted lol

8. Do it!!!

9. What decibel app did you use?

10. That's very interesting, never knew a smartphone could be that accurate

    I have to say i am really surprised

11. Smartphone Sensors are pretty Ovetpowered for its usage. Eg. The Acellerometer is probably the most overpowered one. If you install phyphox, you can monitore it pretty good. And if you lay it onto a table, turn on 3s starting time, for you to not change the scaling by touching it, you can clearly see on the screen, when someone walks by, or if you tap gently in a fair distance to the phone on the table, with your pinky finger. It can detect a lot.

12. I do know that the pressure meter in a Samsung Galaxy is surprisingly sensitive, and the sensor menu is awesome. It can measure altitude changes of less than one meter based on atmospheric pressure, for instance, less than one pascal.

13. 👍👍

14. I would love you to test other smart phone tests. 💚

15. If you were to do another experiment that requires a steady mains voltage, you could use a UPS for voltage smoothing.

16. Im not surprised. Phones are bloody amazing nowadays. I think one even gets a metal detector app

17. I'm quite surprised with how well the phone did.
    I'd definitely like to see you test the magnetic sensor and other sensors (compass, gyroscope, g-sensor, …) on your smartphone.

18. btw iPhone’s have a light sensor but there’s no way to read it except jail breaking it (voids ur warranty)

19. The main issue with the smartphones is that you never really know if your model is as good as another with any particular app. You'd have to test it against a reference meter for everything before you can trust it at all.

    Of course cheap dedicated tools can also have their issues. For example I have a lux meter that gives me pretty high readings when I shine some 400nm light on it – because the plastic in front of the sensor fluoresces and changes the color.

20. Do you know the phrase “Garbage In Garbage Out”? Even your “reference” meters are mostly no-name Chinese products with no reason to believe they are accurate. If you are measuring voltage and use a Fluke meter as your reference that is valid as Fluke products have accuracy traceable to known standards. But you use no-name meters that are likely as questionable as similar Chinese junk from Aliexpress or eBay. It’s a common theme with YouTube videos where YouTubers are too cheap to buy well respected test equipment to make their click bate videos actually credible. Shame on you for basing your measurements and comparisons on products that are themselves not to be trusted. I just unsubscribed as you are joining the fake click bate category of YouTubers.

21. I use "Physics Toolbox Sensor Suite Pro" to access my phone's sensors. There's a free version that I upgraded from because I liked the app so much. Both versions include access to the camera and microphones, proximity sensor and light meter, accelerometer and gravitometer, and the magnetic sensor. I'd love to see all the phone's sensors put against dedicated devices!

22. Make the video!

23. Definitely make a smartphone gauss sensor video.

24. I mean, a smartphone needs to have a decetn microphone. I'm not surprised by how well it's picking up the peak frequency at all, but how accurate the decibel measurements are is interesting

25. Wow! I'd been curious about the sound level readings from apps for a long time. Pretty impressive! With that phone and app combo, anyways.

26. I'm totally surprised by how freaking accurate the phone is when it comes to decibel measurements and can't wrap my head around how it does it as the app can't really know the microphones properties and be calibrated accordingly.

    I expected an inaccuracy of way more than 5%

27. It would be cool to see how well your phone acts as a gaussmeter, though do be careful as powerful magnets can damage electronics in certain situations.

28. Audio perception is very fascinating. At the threshold of hearing the distance the eardrum moves about 1 picometer, 100 times smaller than a hydrogen atom.
    Which opens the question, are quantum effects involved in hearing?

29. I regularly watch a guy who repairs all kinds of old computery stuff, sometimes CRT monitors and TVs and he uses an app to determine if the CRT is working by looking at a spectrum analizer on his phone. If the TV/monitor doesn't show a picture but the main circuit is working, he can see a peak in the monitor's/TV's operational frequency on his app, very interesting stuff.

30. induction cookers are noisy when I turn them on LOL😂😂😂

31. What phone did you use? I suspect this might also have a big influence?

32. Thanks 👍

33. I am not overly surprised by the smartphone sound tests. modern phones have excellent microphones. I use my Samsung phone for certain sound recordings including ambient nature sounds and it performs amazingly well.

34. The problem with the sound meter on the phone is calibration: if the people doing the software have profiles for that phone or not. Also it depends on manufacturing variations. Finally for high frequencies: it seems that the phone doesn't apply the weighing properly: if you barely ear something the meter shouldn't give a high value because the response curves are supposed to follow human sensitivity.

35. I think the result depends on the phone too. I mean, cheaper phones could have worse results. I think it's worth to try different smartphones, and comparing them. Although it's very suprising, that these sensors in your phone are so accurate. Thank you for the video, it was very interesting!

36. I'd be interested to see how the sound level meters compared with one of the high end sound level meters/analysers like the B&K type 2250.

37. For those who are interested how to access diagnostics app on Samsung smartphones: you need to dial *#0*# in phone dialer

38. what smartphone are you using for testing?

39. This is a brilliant video!! Thanks for comparing. For anyone looking for the apps used in the video:

    Lux Light Meter Photometer Pro

    Decibel X – Pro Sound Meter

    (Can't share Play Store links since the comments get auto-deleted)

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