PhoneLab
Every hardware sensor, system stat, and thermal zone on your phone — live, in one screen.
Read this in: English · עברית · Español · العربية
Roadmap: see ROADMAP.md
⬇ Download the latest APK · Website · Privacy Policy
What is PhoneLab?
PhoneLab is a single-screen Android app for anyone who wants to know exactly what their device's hardware is doing right now — developers testing sensor behavior, tech enthusiasts, gamers watching thermals, or anyone just curious what's inside their phone.
No ads. No account. No background services when you're not using it. The app only ever reads sensors and system files already exposed to any Android app and it has no internet permission at all, on Google Play and on GitHub / F-Droid alike. See the Privacy Policy for the full picture.
Screenshots
Features
📡 Sensors tab — live readings from 24 sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, gravity, rotation vectors, barometer, light, proximity, humidity, ambient temperature, heart rate, step counter, tilt/motion detectors, and more), plus GPS speed and a live sound-level meter. Sensor availability varies by device — the app clearly labels what your hardware doesn't have.
⚙️ System tab — device model, Android version, CPU/RAM/storage, thermal-zone temperatures (CPU/GPU/battery/skin and more) with color-coded alerts, a 4-phase performance benchmark, CSV session recording that keeps running in the background via a foreground service, and spec export to a text file.
🔧 Hardware tab — per-core live CPU frequency, detailed battery stats, display capabilities (refresh rate, HDR), and hardware capability flags (NFC, Bluetooth, camera count, biometric enrollment).
🧰 Tools tab — bubble level, compass calibration, a magnetometer metal detector, and a vibration seismograph with frequency analysis.
✅ Device check — 11 guided hardware tests (touch screen, multi-touch, display, speaker, microphone, vibration, buttons, proximity, flashlight, motion sensors, battery) with a shareable pass/fail report — handy when buying or selling a used phone.
🔋 Battery health — health status, charging power in watts, estimated capacity, charge cycles and a 24-hour level history.
🏠 Home screen widget & Quick Settings tile — check CPU temperature without opening the app.
🔔 Alerts — custom rules for any reading ("notify me when X goes above Y") plus CPU-temperature alerts, all with hysteresis so they won't spam you.
🎨 Two display modes — Textual (raw numbers, developer-friendly) or Visual (icons, gauges, progress bars) — switch with one tap.
✨ Material 3 with optional Material You colors, 🌙 dark & light themes, 🌐 4 languages (English, Hebrew, Spanish, Arabic, with full RTL support), 📐 Metric/Imperial units.
PhoneLab Web
A companion browser-based sensor dashboard lives in this repo under Web/ and runs live at sensolab-web.vercel.app — no install needed. It mirrors what the Web Platform exposes on your current browser/device: motion & orientation sensors, GPS, ambient light, an internet speed test, and CSV/PNG export of everything it reads. Everything runs client-side; nothing is sent anywhere.
Download
- APK: grab
PhoneLab-v<version>.apk from the Releases page — every release lists what changed in plain language.
- Obtainium: add
https://github.com/DrummingBird1/PhoneLab to get updates straight from GitHub releases.
- F-Droid / IzzyOnDroid: submissions in progress.
- Google Play: coming soon.
Every build (GitHub / F-Droid and Google Play alike) contains no proprietary libraries and has no internet permission. The Google Play build is signed by Google, so switching between Play and an APK install requires uninstalling first.
Building from source
Requirements: JDK 21, Android SDK 36, and the Gradle wrapper (bundled — no separate Gradle install needed).
The app has two flavors: foss (GitHub, F-Droid and other stores — no proprietary libraries) and play (Google Play, adds the Rate button). Neither has proprietary libraries or in-app purchases.
cd App
./gradlew assembleFossDebug # debug APK → app/build/outputs/apk/foss/debug/
./gradlew assembleFossRelease # release APK → app/build/outputs/apk/foss/release/
./gradlew test # JUnit unit tests
A signed release build needs a signing key: copy App/key.properties.template to App/key.properties and fill in your own keystore details. Without key.properties, release builds still compile — just unsigned.
See CLAUDE.md for the full architecture walkthrough (fragments, helper classes, permission model, non-obvious quirks) — it's the same orientation doc used for AI-assisted development on this repo, and doubles as living technical documentation.
Tech stack
Java, classic Android Views + Material Components (no Compose), ViewPager2 + TabLayout, WorkManager for background thermal checks, a foreground Service for CSV recording, TileService for the Quick Settings tile, AppWidgetProvider for the home screen widget. The Web dashboard is Vite + TypeScript, no framework.
Project layout
PhoneLab/
├── App/ the Gradle project — open this in Android Studio
├── Web/ the browser dashboard (Vite + TypeScript)
├── Assets/ store listing copy, icons, screenshots, changelogs
├── fastlane/ store listing text, icon and screenshots (F-Droid / IzzyOnDroid)
├── Distribution/ F-Droid recipe and store guide (builds and keys are git-ignored)
└── Archive/ frozen snapshots of older versions
License
PhoneLab is free software, licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 (GPL-3.0-only). You may use, study, share and modify it; distributed modified versions must stay under the same license with their source available.
Support
If this project is useful to you, you can support its development:
Ko-fi · Buy Me a Coffee · Patreon
