Does My Phone Have a Gyroscope? How to Check in 30 Seconds

The 30 second check

1. Open the gyroscope test in the phone's browser (Chrome on Android, Safari on iPhone).
2. Tap Start. On iPhone, Safari asks for permission to use motion and orientation; tap Allow. If you tapped Deny before, close the tab and open the page again.
3. Turn the phone in your hand. With a gyroscope, the 3D phone follows you and the graph shows the rotation rate around each axis.

The page tells you in words what it found. "Gyroscope is working" means a real sensor is reporting. "Motion data arrives but without rotation rate" means the phone has an accelerometer and no gyroscope. "No motion data" usually means the browser blocks sensors (some privacy browsers do) or the page was opened on a computer, which almost never has one. The phone sensor test lists every motion, orientation, light and location sensor the browser can see in one go.

Which phones do not have a gyroscope?

All iPhones from the iPhone 4 onward have a three-axis gyroscope, and so do iPads from the iPad 2. On Android, the gyroscope is a cheap part but still one that makers leave out of their lowest-priced models, mostly entry-level phones and tablets. The same model name can even differ by region or year, so a spec sheet that says "Gyro: No" or simply does not list it is a warning sign.

Android settings do not list the sensors, so the easiest proofs are a browser test like ours or an app that lists hardware sensors. Spec sites usually list the sensors under a "Features" or "Sensors" line.

What is a virtual gyroscope?

Some phones without the chip offer a software "virtual gyroscope" or "gyro emulation". It estimates rotation from the accelerometer (which senses gravity and movement) and the magnetometer (the compass). It can tell roughly which way the phone is tilted, so slow things such as auto-rotate and simple 360 degree photo viewers work.

What it cannot do is measure fast rotation precisely. The compass reacts slowly and is thrown off by nearby metal and magnets, and the accelerometer cannot tell turning from moving. The result is lag and jitter, which is why gyro aiming in games feels unusable and VR views drift on these phones. Our guide to the gyroscope and the accelerometer explains the difference between the two sensors.

What you lose without a gyroscope

• Gyro aiming in shooters such as PUBG Mobile, Call of Duty Mobile and Fortnite: the option is missing or does nothing.
• 360 degree videos and photos on YouTube and Facebook: you swipe to look around instead of turning the phone.
• VR viewers such as cardboard headsets: the view drifts or does not follow your head.
• Augmented reality: AR apps track how the phone turns in space, so on phones without a gyroscope many refuse to install or lose track of the scene.
• Panoramas and stabilization: panorama modes and some video stabilization rely on the gyro; without it they are less smooth or missing.

Auto-rotate, step counting and the bubble level work fine with the accelerometer alone.

When the gyroscope is there but misbehaves

If the test shows a gyroscope but games drift or the view slowly spins, run the drift check on the gyroscope test: lay the phone flat and still for ten seconds. A healthy sensor reads close to zero; a steady non-zero rate is drift. Restarting the phone clears most short-term drift, and the in-game "calibrate gyroscope" option (with the phone flat on a table) handles the rest. A gyroscope that drifts badly after a restart and a calibration, or stops reporting after a drop, is a hardware fault.