Use Your iPhone/iPod Touch to Measure Your Car’s Performance

I heard about this tasty little app from the guys over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. For those of you not in the know, the iPhone and iPod Touch contain accelerometers, or devices for measuring acceleration and gravity induced reaction forces. This is how they know when you’re holding them right side up, or on the side. Up until now, the accelerometer has been used to put applications in landscape mode, change the calculator, and in games, control a vehicle or character.

But with the release of Dynolicious, you can now use our iPhone/iPod Touch to do calculate your car’s performance! Dynolicious can measure:

0-60 Acceleration time
1/4 Mile Elapsed Time
Lateral G’s
Horsepower
LOTS more

It also keeps a history of runs, gives you averages, and trends your results. Best of all, you can enter modifications done to your car, and it will identify gains and losses. There’s also a real time speedometer, graphs, and skidpad. Sounds pretty cool right?

I haven’t tried this yet myself, but one person did note that the hp measurement seems to be off by about 25hp, and at least 0.5 to 0.75 seconds on the 0-60 test. However, he did say that the the results were consistent. This is pretty similar to real dyno’s in that they’re a better measurement of improvements from mods instead of measuring real world hp.

There have been 35 reviews so far in the App Store with an average rating of 4/5 stars. Most reviewers say that the software is a little buggy, and some are having problems editing “My Ride” or “Calibration”, but all of these concerns should be cleared up quickly with an update. If you’ve downloaded this app, why not send me your review to read or play on the show? Send an email or an mp3 file of your review to ScionUnderground@gmail.com, and I’ll get you in!

Dynolicious is available now through app store in iTunes, or right over your iPhone/iPod Touch for only $12.99! This week, I’m starting phase 1 of my tC 2.0, and after it’s finished, and I get a real dyno time, I’ll definitely be downloading this app to verify its accuracy. Here are some screenshots of the app in action: