Metal Detection Using Your Smart Phone

Imagine having a metal detector handy when you, as an emergency physician, have an unconscious patient come in and you need to know whether he has an implant. Well, you can sort of do it now with the Metal Detector app for Android phones that have magnetometers (ex: HTC T-Mobile G1). It won’t do quite yet, as the magnetometer that’s typically used as a compass isn’t strong enough to detect keys more than an a couple inches away. But as a preview, we can imagine having one of these apps handy on a future, more magnetically endowed, smart phone.