Gesture recognition method and device

The invention relates to the gesture recognition technology, in particular to a gesture recognition method and device. The method includes the steps that when a preset gesture recognition event is triggered, the acceleration value measured by an acceleration sensor in a mobile device is acquired regularly; for each moment at which the acceleration value is acquired, the acceleration change value corresponding to the moment is calculated according to the acquired acceleration value, and the type of a user gesture is recognized according to the currently-calculated acceleration change value; when the recognized type of the user gesture is the preset gesture type, gesture recognition operation is stopped. By the adoption of the method, the type of the user gesture is recognized according to the change trend of the acceleration change values along with time, gesture recognition accuracy is improved, and user experience is improved.