Android Lollipop will let you wake your phone just by picking it up

sincity · October 21, 2014

In these busy modern times, who can be bothered to manually wake up their phone? Not us (even though we do) and luckily Google feels our pain because with Android 5.0 Lollipop it's adding a new feature called 'Ambient display'.

Although the feature hasn't made it in to the developer preview it has been spied in an image taken from the full Android 5.0 ROM and leaked by developer Prashant Gahlot.

The image not only shows the setting toggle, but also an explanation that it will "wake screen when device picked up or notifications arrive."

This follows a similar but not identical piece of text on the official Android Lollipop page, which says "where supported by the hardware, your device will wake up as soon as you pick it up or tap the screen twice."

Smart screen

So it seems clear that whether it happens automatically or with a quick double tap, turning the screen on could become even faster and more intuitive than it is now.

It's a feature that's clearly inspired by Moto Display on the Moto X, but it's a good idea so we're happy to see it make its way to more phones.

As to which phones specifically will support it that's less clear, presumably it simply requires the right selection of sensors, which hopefully means most recent handsets will support it, but that remains to be seen.