Beyond the Camera: Applications of Embedded Smartphone Sensors in the Analytical Sciences

Smartphone-based analytical systems have become an important area of research owing to their widespread availability, computational power, connectivity, and sensing capabilities. To date, most analytical science applications have utilized smartphone cameras for colorimetric, fluorescent, and imaging-based measurements. However, smartphones incorporate a range of embedded sensors that remain comparatively underexploited within analytical science. This review examines the emerging analytical science applications of non-camera smartphone sensors, including microphones, accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, ambient light sensors, barometers, Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) systems, capacitive touchscreens, proximity sensors, and GNSS/GPS technologies. Representative applications include photoacoustic biosensing, liquid-property determination, glucose and pH monitoring, environmental analysis, structural and seismic sensing, touchscreen-based conductivity and biomolecular measurements, geospatially enabled environmental monitoring, and non-contact liquid characterization. The underlying sensing principles, analytical performance, advantages, and current limitations of each technology are discussed here, together with examples demonstrating the possibility of use as point-of-need analytical platforms. The relevant literature published between 2010 and 2026 was identified through structured searches of major scientific databases and evaluated using a narrative review approach.