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Android 12's face-based screen rotation is perfect for bedtime doomscrolling
Where was this feature during all of 2020?
Android 12 is shaping up to be all about the new Material You redesign and theming system. It's a hot look, but it's not all we're getting, and one of the cooler features to land in yesterday's release is the new face-based autorotation for the Pixel 4 and later. Once enabled, it harnesses not just the angle of your phone relative to the ground, but also your face's orientation. That means it considers how you're looking at your phone, not just what the accelerometer says, making it perfect for a bit of bedtime doomscrolling in portrait.
Android 12 Beta 3 lands today with the scrolling screenshots we've been waiting years for
Get ready for your screenshot gallery to start looking like a collection of CVS receipts
Android 12 Beta 3 lands today, and chief among the changes Google has announced with this latest release is one we have been waiting actual, literal years for. In 2019, Google called it "infeasible," but a single question from the audience at Google I/O overruled that decision. Hidden signs of it appeared in Android 11 before Google pushed back development. It was spotted again in an early Android 12 preview. And now, on Wednesday, July 14th, Google has made one of stock Android's longest-requested features a reality. We got scrolling screenshots, guys.
Android 12's face-based auto-rotation won't be exclusive to Pixels after all
The nifty feature will be baked into AOSP
Google doesn't shy away from showing its AI & ML smarts in its Pixel phones, with features like Hold for Me and Recorder serving as notable examples. In the same vein, we recently heard that face-based auto-rotation could make its way to the Pixel with Android 12, but as it turns out, it could be available on other phones too.
Android 12's first developer preview is just around the corner, and we've already heard a lot about what we can expect — from huge UI changes to app pairs. With the next version, we're also expecting to see a bunch of features that will be exclusive to Pixel devices, and the latest one we're hearing about is face-based auto-rotate.
Long-standing Pixel bug that breaks all on-device sensors spreads to Pixel 5
Though the December update might fix it for some
In a case of déjà vu, a minority of Pixel 5 owners are starting to report issues with all of their phone's various on-device sensors, including the compass, gyroscope, and proximity sensor. Based on the details provided, this sounds like the same issue that some prior Pixel phones were plagued by, which may have been caused by a corrupted "persist" partition. However, Google tells us that a fix for several sensor issues across all Pixel devices was included in the December 2020 patch, and some of those affected claim the update fixes their problem.
Many still affected by long-standing Android 10 update issue that breaks Pixel sensors
It's been over five months Google, this is ridiculous
Last year, after the Android 10 update first started rolling out for Pixel owners, there were a handful of reports that device sensors — things like the ambient light sensor for screen brightness, orientation sensor for auto-rotation, and Active Edge sensor — stopped working. A workaround was found for those with unlocked bootloaders, and many of those affected were part of the root and ROM crowd, but almost six months later, many phones are still affected, and those with Verizon-branded, locked devices are still simply out of luck.