Not many people are aware that the Nokia N95 features a built-in 3D Accelerometer that can be used with the S60 Mobile Sensor APIs to get data from the embedded sensors and perform actions against it.

Samir, the author of the famous RotateMe software, will be releasing a new version of the application which will automatically rotate the screen from portrait to landscape mode and vice versa by reacting to the device screen orientation information from Nokia N95’s embedded sensor, similiar to Apple’s iPhone. Another version for non-sensor enabled S60 devices would support automatically rotating the screen based on per application preferences.

Nokia Research Center already features two demo applications that utilize the N95’s mobile sensor APIs:

Activity Monitor: The Nokia Activity Monitor displays charts and statistics, in real-time, about your movements while walking or running. It counts the number of steps, and determines the distance covered and the energy expenditure. Your steps are detected by analysing the output from the accelerometer in an S60 smart phone. This software is currently not available for download.

MovingBall: This is another app [link] in which the ball reacts to the 3 axis accelerometer. Before installing the demo, make sure to install the N95 RD Accelerometer Plug-in package from here.