Engadget (via Unwired View) broke the news that Motorola submitted a patent for a phone that they hope will appeal to fengshui enthusiasts.

Some features:

• Three-dimensional Hall-effect sensor for measuring the strength of electromagnetic fields and to form a compass.
• Digital camera to determine color saturation, order and balance of the surroundings. (Silly, but the McFengshui crowd will love it.)
• GPS receiver to determine geographic location of the phone. (So you can find airports and landfills. Never mind that civilian GPS has errors added.)
• Cellphone microphone is used to measure noise level of the location. (Pray that you are not analyzing a bustling business.)
• AM/FM radio to measure the AM and FM transmission strength and the distance from the nearest AM/FM towers. (A quirky notion.)
• A table with qi values of each parameter is stored in memory and is used for calculation of qi values of different parameters.

After you stop laughing about “qi values” you wonder: would this work? Should I throw away the Luopan and order a phone?

Not yet.

Here are the qi (or in this case “chi”) parameters listed in the patent.

Based on the patent this phone is little more than a gimmick. There are not enough of the parameters that any good consultant takes into consideration and you cannot obtain the data in such a way that it could be useful. Not sensitive enough in the important things, and too sensitive on the wrong things.

If you are analyzing property built on landfill or reclaimed from the sea, or analyzing factories or airports, you are flat out of luck.