The Galaxy S5 does not have temperature or humidity sensors (opens in new tab)

Conflicting information, I just talked with someone from Sensirion who was quite central to the the SHTC1 project, he confirmed it was NOT the waterproofing that was the issue and pointed out there are Japanese devices with the same chip that are waterproof, even to IP68 (2m depth).

The S5 barometer apparently survives underwater... I see no reason why a temperature/humidity sensor can't be engineered to.

I believe temperature sensors are required to get barometric data to altitude[1]. That's why all altimeter watches also have temperature though its usually useless while wearing since its reading the temp of your wrist instead of the air.

On a second note I produce an app (http://www.ullrlabs.com) for avalanche danger evaluation and knowing your ambient air temperature is one factor which is helpful in that process. Though I haven't yet tried to read that value on android phones for the app.

[1]See pressure altimeter calibration equation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altimeter

to the individual they did not pose much benefit, but to society as a whole they were extremely useful. Through programs like pressureNET, literally opening up new avenues for data recording that never existed before.

In the short term these new sensors will provide more benefits to the consumer, but to the majority they will be something you use 1 or 2 times then forget about.

Temperature would be extremely useful... if not for the fact that I typically store my cellphone millimeters away from my body.

If temperature were useful, then humidity would be as well because then you could calculate local humidex.

I believe that monitoring internal components is exactly why temperature sensors are useful: the device can shut itself off it it becomes too hot. This can happen if the it has been left on the dashboard of a car during the summer, for example. This can help to lengthen the lifetime of the device.

+1 - mostly it's good for checking I still have a body temperature.

When you give developers more tools, they surprise you with what they come up with. Consumers didn't say they wanted accelerometers, but once developers got ahold of them, they proved massively useful.

If you give me a new sensor, I might not have any ideas on how to make it useful, but if one developer has one good idea, that benefits me.

Did you miss the "gimmicky" part? Samsung is thinking from the customer perspective in that they are usually brought in by flashy "new" features. But that doesn't mean that these features actually pan out into anything useful.

I guess "consumer perspective" means "optimizing short-term amount of money extracted from customers for value given" instead of "providing the most awesome product we can and reaping benefits a little bit later".

Sadly they are selling to the devil: http://opensignal.com/insights/

Allow me to be skeptical about the reliability of this algorithm. How can you ever know the temperature of the air outside by measuring the temperature of your pocket? Sure, there's a correlation, to some degree. But what if you wear different pants, or put the phone in your bag? I just don't see how that's possible (to a meaningful degree of precision). I would think data from weather stations would be a lot more reliable, and make the temperature sensor obsolete.

That sounds like an overkill, in this case it's easier for your phone to get your ambient temperature from some wather server around the world.