Summary
- Adaptive timeout in Android 15 could improve battery life by turning off the screen when not in use.
- Pixel phones with Android 15 may get this feature, with the feature supposedly not a part of AOSP.
- The new option should work in a similar fashion as “Screen attention” relying on the front camera.
Android 15 is still more than a few months away from launch. So far, Google has seeded two Developer Preview builds of the OS as it prepares for its public beta release at I/O in just over a month. We should hear more about all the new features in Android 15 then, but over the last few weeks, plenty has been revealed already. A new report sheds more light on another useful Android 15 feature, adaptive timeout, which could help extend your phone’s battery life.
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Depending on your preference, you can set your Android phone’s screen timeout to 15 seconds or as long as 30 minutes. Additionally, you can set the phone to lock itself immediately after screen timeout or after a pre-specified delay ranging from 5 seconds to as long as 30 minutes. On some phones, there’s a Screen attention feature, which ensures the display does not timeout while you are looking at it.
Mishaal Rahman, writing for Android Authority, spotted strings referencing a new “adaptive timeout” option in Android 15 Developer Preview 2. The feature “automatically turns off your screen early if you’re not using your device.” There’s no detail on how the feature works, but presumably, like Screen attention, it will use the front camera to detect whether you are using your phone.
Adaptive timeout could give your phone’s battery life a boost
If implemented right, adaptive timeout should help extend your phone’s battery life by turning off the display when you are not looking at it. The difference should be easily noticeable if you keep your phone’s display brightness at maximum. The feature will also ensure that no one can snoop on the content on your phone’s screen when you are not using the device.
Based on some code digging, Mishaal claims that adaptive timeout is likely exclusive to Google’s Pixel phones with Android 15. It won’t be part of the base Android code (AOSP). So, even if your non-Pixel phone gets Android 15, it might not get adaptive timeout unless your device maker decides to implement the feature themselves. Since most Android phones already support screen attention, there’s little reason for them not to support adaptive timeout.
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