Sensor availability based on the Android API level

There is a wide variety of sensors that are supported on Android devices. As Android evolved over a period of time, new sensors were added, and some old, inefficient sensors were removed. With the release of newer versions of Android, they got better and more accurate, and the list of supported sensors got bigger. Most of the apps have to support older versions of Android to target the wider audience. But at the same time, not all sensors are supported by older versions of Android. It's a tradeoff between supporting older versions of Android versus getting to use the latest and more advanced sensors that are only available in newer versions of Android.

The following table provides the sensor availability list based on the Android version and API levels. This table illustrates four major platforms to show availability, as the major changes were made in these four platforms only:

Sensor	Android 6.0 (API Level 23)	Android 4.0 (API Level 14)	Android 2.3 (API Level 9)	Android 2.2 (API Level 8)
Accelerometer	Available	Available	Available	Available
Ambient temperature	Available	Available	NA	NA
Gravity	Available	Available	Available	NA
Gyroscope	Available	Available	Available	NA
Light	Available	Available	Available	Available
Linear acceleration	Available	Available	Available	NA
Magnetic field	Available	Available	Available	Available
Orientation	Deprecated	Deprecated	Deprecated	Deprecated
Pressure	Available	Available	Available	NA
Proximity	Available	Available	Available	Available
Relative humidity	Available	Available	NA	NA
Rotation vector	Available	Available	Available	NA
Step Detector	Available	NA	NA	NA
Step Counter	Available	NA	NA	NA
Temperature	Deprecated	Deprecated	Available	Available