This new Android feature could help you squeeze out more battery life
Android users are about to get a lot more options for how long their displays stay active before locking up.
In a first look at the latest Android 15 developer beta (via Android Authority), a new feature called “Adaptive Timeout” stands out. By going into your device’s display settings, you’ll be able to separately set times for how long it takes for your screen to timeout when you aren’t using it, as well as how long after that it takes for the device to lock itself.
The former can range from 15 seconds to 30 minutes, while the latter ranges from “immediately” to 30 minutes.
Beyond that, there’s an optional toggle that will stop your phone’s screen from turning off while you’re looking at it by using the front-facing camera. That’s not strictly new, but there’s a novel wrinkle to it: You’ll be able to lock up early if you’re not actively looking at it.
Obviously, anything that keeps your screen off will extend your phone’s battery life. The only weird part of this is that some of it kind of sounds like how smartphones have always worked. For instance, iPhones can already set a screen auto-lock time. Perhaps there’s some other angle to this that will rear its head once the feature is in people’s hands, but it isn’t the most revolutionary thing in the world.
It shouldn’t be long now before we get a more thorough and official explanation of feature. Google is set to talk about Android 15 at Google I/O in May.