Is it possible to detect motion when screen is off?

Question

My app simply need to detect any motion of the device while screen is off.

I know that accelerometer is used for this task but it don't work while screen is off in all devices. this is a list of devices http://www.saltwebsites.com/2012/android-accelerometers-screen-off

so is there a way of taking accelerometer sensor data while screen is off that works on all devices?

or is there a way to detect motion using another sensors?

Answer 1

Partial Wake Lock is all you need to access accelerometer readings while the screen is off.

You can use it like this:

private PowerManager.WakeLock mWakeLock;

PowerManager pm = (PowerManager) getSystemService(Context.POWER_SERVICE);
mWakeLock = pm.newWakeLock(PowerManager.PARTIAL_WAKE_LOCK, "My Tag");
mWakeLock.acquire();

And after you're done, just release the lock:

mWakeLock.release();

If you obtain accelerometer data in a Service, you could simply acquire lock in it's onCreate() and release in onDestroy().