Future Apple Watches, iPhones could detect pollen levels, air quality, even poison gas in the air as evidenced by a newly granted Apple patent (number 10,788,308) for “particulate matter sensors for portable devices.
The device would do this by using a last that could detect particles in the wind flow that reflect and/or scatter laser light. Based on the determined speed and the number of detected particles over time, the particulate matter concentration in the wind flow can be estimated.
Here’s the summary of the patent: “Aspects of the subject technology relate to particulate matter sensors for electronic devices. A particulate matter sensor may include three lasers, three total-internal-reflection lenses, and three detectors for detecting changes in the operation of the three lasers due to the principles of self-mixing interferometry. The three total-internal-reflection lenses may use internally reflective surfaces to tilt the three beams into three corresponding directions that form an orthogonal basis in the three dimensional space, so that a gas flow speed can be determined while maintaining a small, modular form factor for implementation of the sensor in portable electronic devices.”
