AllClearSensorLibrary

I think battery life is quite simple to solve for, actually. A common method to work through this, especially for earthquakes, is to only capture sensor data when the phone is stationary and plugged in+charging. If the phone is moving or unplugged, no data needs to be gathered. Sure, this limits the quantity of data you can get in the short-term, but relaxes users long-term and keeps the app installed. Offering these settings as toggles also helps. FWIW, I mostly work on barometers. New versions of Android lock down the sensor access so it cannot be done in the background; my solution is low-resolution data (15-minute intervals, rather than ideal 1-minute) and for user privacy, I can discard location data after summarizing pressure data into gridded anonymous areas. I do this in All Clear Weather: https://play.google.com/store/apps/detail

That's interesting - I'm working on using cell signal strength as an indicator for live weather features! There's a simple relationship between signal strength and clearness of weather - light rain has a distortion signal, heavier rain a heavier distortion, etc. I'm betting that when all is said and done, the cell phones will help the weather forecast more than hurt it - but this may take some years if the cell companies are too greedy about it. I'm working on detecting weather using all kinds of phone sensors like barometers and cameras in All Clear if you're interested: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe... and the open source sensor package: https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary