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Which Android phones still have a barometer, IR blaster, or heart-rate sensor?

Some phone hardware features are universal (Bluetooth, WiFi, accelerometer). Some are minority features (fingerprint, NFC). And some are practically extinct — present on a few percent of the catalog, usually concentrated in one or two manufacturers' product lines, often as legacy hold-outs from older design eras.

This post is about that third category. We pulled prevalence numbers from the catalog of 28,077 Android devices and listed the rare hardware features that still exist, who ships them, and what they're useful for if you actually want one.

Barometer (atmospheric pressure sensor) — 7.5% of devices

Reports as android.hardware.sensor.barometer in the manifest. 2,112 devices in the catalog have it.

What it's for:

  • Altitude estimation more accurate than GPS (GPS is good to ~10m vertical, barometer + temperature can hit ~1m).
  • Weather apps that show local pressure trends.
  • Hiking and aviation apps that need fine-grained elevation.
  • Indoor positioning (some indoor-mapping systems use barometric pressure to detect floor changes in tall buildings).

Who still ships it:

  • Samsung Galaxy S series (S20, S21, S22, S23, S24 all have it).
  • Samsung Galaxy Note series (legacy line, all had it).
  • Most Pixel phones since the Pixel 2.
  • A handful of Sony Xperia flagships.
  • Effectively no budget phones, no mid-range phones, no Chinese-brand mid-range.

If your hiking/altimeter app shows wildly different numbers between two phones, this is usually why — one has a barometer, the other is computing elevation from GPS alone.

IR blaster (consumer IR) — 6.7% of devices

Reports as android.hardware.consumerir. 1,879 devices in the catalog have it.

What it's for:

  • Universal-remote apps that control TVs, A/C units, and other infrared-controlled devices.
  • A weirdly useful feature in hotel rooms with broken remotes.
  • Industrial inventory scanners that use IR for short-range data exchange.

Who still ships it:

  • Xiaomi flagships and many mid-range Xiaomi phones still have IR blasters. Mi/Redmi devices are the biggest source.
  • A few HTC and LG phones from 2013-2017 (HTC One M7/M8, LG G3/G4, LG V10).
  • Some Samsung Galaxy Note 3/4/5 (then phased out).
  • A handful of Lenovo and ZTE devices mostly aimed at the Asian market.

Western flagships (Pixel, modern Galaxy S, OnePlus, Nothing) have entirely abandoned the IR blaster. It's now almost exclusively a Xiaomi feature in current-year phones, and a Samsung legacy feature.

Pro Audio (low-latency audio) — 6.0% of devices

Reports as android.hardware.audio.pro. 1,671 devices in the catalog support it.

What it's for:

  • Real-time audio synthesis (synthesizers, DJ mixers).
  • Live audio effects without buffering delay.
  • Pro-grade music production apps.

Why so few have it: The Android audio stack defaults to higher latency than iOS. Phones that can certify against the Pro Audio spec need to demonstrate consistent <20ms round-trip audio latency, which requires both specific audio hardware and a customized HAL. Most manufacturers don't bother because most users don't notice.

Who still ships it:

  • Pixel phones (Google maintains the Pro Audio spec primarily as a Pixel feature).
  • A handful of Samsung Galaxy S series in specific regions.
  • Some Asus ROG Phones (gaming-focused).
  • Sony Xperia (Sony cares about audio for marketing reasons).

If you're a musician thinking about Android for live performance, the model selection is genuinely narrow. iPad still wins this category by a wide margin, and on Android it's mostly Pixel.

Heart-rate sensor — 1.2% of devices

Reports as android.hardware.sensor.heartrate. 346 devices in the catalog have it.

What it's for:

  • Continuous or on-demand heart-rate measurement using an optical sensor.

Who shipped it:

  • Samsung Galaxy S5, S6, S7, S8, S9, S10 (this was a Samsung-pioneered phone feature from 2014-2019).
  • Samsung Galaxy Note 4, 5, 7, 8, 9 (Note line carried it).
  • A few Honor and Huawei mid-range in 2016-2018.
  • Effectively zero post-2020 phones from any manufacturer.

The phone-mounted heart-rate sensor became a dead feature once smartwatches took over the use case.

Sensors below 1% — barely shipping at all

A few hardware features that are nearly extinct in the Play catalog:

  • Ambient temperature sensor (android.hardware.sensor.ambient_temperature): 164 devices, 0.6%. Mostly pre-2017 Samsung Galaxy S/Note phones. The S4 had one. By the S6, it was gone.
  • Humidity sensor (android.hardware.sensor.relative_humidity): 92 devices, 0.3%. Same Samsung-S4-era story. Almost no phones today have it. If you bought a phone "with weather sensors," you bought a Galaxy S4.

Why this matters

For buyers: most of these features aren't on the spec page. If a feature matters to you (you actually use a hiking altimeter, you actually need the IR blaster for your old AC unit), look it up specifically before buying.

For developers: don't assume any of these features exist, even on flagship devices. Use PackageManager.hasSystemFeature(...) and have a graceful no-feature path.

For app discovery: the addressable market for "weather pressure trends" features is 2,112 phones × actual usage = a small slice of Android. The addressable market for "controls your old TV" is 1,879 phones, almost entirely Xiaomi. The addressable market for "phone-based heart-rate measurement" peaked in 2017 and never recovered.

— Marcus

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