With the launch of the Android 12 Developer Preview, apparently close, we learned that Pixel smartphones may be getting a new face-based option for automatic rotation.
On today’s Pixel phones, as well as Android devices in general, you can make the screen orientation rotate to match your device’s orientation. For example, you can browse YouTube in portrait mode and flip the device from side to side to maximize the video.
However, there is an interesting peculiarity to this experience, or perhaps you can think of it as an incompatibility between what phones expect and how humans act. Many of us are in the habit of using our phones in bed – despite Google’s efforts for digital well-being. And if you do this lying on your side, both your head and your phone will be turned to the side.
With automatic rotation as it works today, your phone will enter landscape mode, where you would like it to remain in portrait mode for easy reading. With Android Pie, phones have been given a practical button to rotate the screen that appears when the phone is turned to the side and automatic rotation is off. Those using their phones lying on their side are likely to keep automatic rotation off and simply use this button when they need to rotate the screen.
According to the information displayed by 9to5Google, Android 12 is configured to bring an optional face-based version of Auto-Rotate for Pixel smartphones. In essence, your phone will use its front camera to check whether someone is looking at the screen and, if so, which way the head is turned.
The technology behind this is probably a simplified version of the face shape recognition features of apps like Snapchat and Google Duo. For obvious privacy reasons, this camera-based scan will happen entirely on your device and will not save or send your photo anywhere.
It is possible that this facial version of Auto-Rotate could be launched as a broader feature of Android 12, but for now we believe it will be exclusively for Pixel phones, at least in the short term. Alternatively, as has happened before with features found in newer versions of Android, face-based Auto-Rotate can arrive as part of a Pixel Feature Drop.
Dylan Roussel contributed to this article
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