In summary
- Always-on Display to get more nuanced on Pixel
- Code found in early Android build
- Pixel fans set to test early hardware
Google is developing a new, smarter take on the Always-on Display that could offer significant battery life gains to future Pixel smartphones.
We often associate Pixel phones such as the Google Pixel 10 with smart features, but its AOD provision is one of the dumbest on the market at present. You can either turn it on or off, with no provision to schedule when its heads-up function is available.
Google looks set to change all that, according to a piece of code discovered by Android Authority within the latest Android Canary release – Google’s earliest pre-release Android build.
Within the Settings app, there’s mention of an AOD-labelled option to “turn off display on inactivity”. This will then “powers down the display when no user activity is detected to save power.”
Foundry | Alex Walker-Todd
To be clear, the option itself isn’t available at present, suggesting Google is in the early stages of developing it. If we were to speculate, it would probably be analogous to Samsung’s automatic AOD option, which deactivates the Always-on Display when a phone is face-down, in the dark, or when the user is likely to be sleeping.
Whatever the shape of the execution, it promises to bolster the battery life on all future – and many current – Pixel phones whenever it’s rolled out.
Pixel test revealed
In separate Pixel news, Bloomberg reports that Google intends to let select users try out its new phone models ahead of launch in a so-called Trusted Tester Program.
The publication reports that Google has been inviting members of its Superfans group to apply to a test scheme. As many as 15 members who profess their love for all things Pixel with sufficient fervour will be selected to receive future devices – following the signing of an NDA, of course.
Selected participants will also need to agree to disguise any Pixel prototypes in special protective cases supplied by Google.
There’s no time line on when this program might kick off, but with a traditional August Pixel phone reveal, it could conceivably commence in early 2026.
