Raw Sensors and Composite Sensors

The sensors referenced through the Sensor class may be of two types:

• Raw sensors (hardware-based) give raw data from a sensor, and one raw sensor corresponds to one actual physical component inside the Android device.
  • Sensor.TYPE_LIGHT
  • Sensor.TYPE_PROXIMITY
  • Sensor.TYPE_PRESSURE
  • Sensor.TYPE_TEMPERATURE (deprecated)
  • Sensor.TYPE_ACCELEROMETER
  • Sensor.TYPE_GYROSCOPE
  • Sensor.TYPE_MAGNETIC_FIELD
  • Sensor.TYPE_RELATIVE_HUMIDITY
  • Sensor.TYPE_AMBIENT_TEMPERATURE

• Composite sensors (software-based) provide an abstraction layer between application code and low-level device components by either combining the raw data of multiple raw sensors, or by modifying the raw sensor data to make it easier to consume.
  • Sensor.TYPE_ROTATION_VECTOR
  • Sensor.TYPE_LINEAR_ACCELERATION
  • Sensor.TYPE_GRAVITY
  • Sensor.TYPE_ORIENTATION (deprecated)