Coming Soon to a Nexus (and Possibly Android) Near You: On-Body Detection

Unlocking a smartphone is the tech equivalent of lather, rinse, repeat that most people are doing throughout the day. Get your phone out of your pocket, input your security code or gesture and unlock. If you ask anyone how often they do it, they won’t be able to tell you but they do know the conservative estimate is a lot.

Google’s rolling out a feature that uses a device’s accelerometer to determine if a device is on someone’s body or not. If the device is on the user’s body, it’ll stay unlocked. But if it’s set down someplace else, like a table, it locks the device.

The function, called On-Body Detection is currently available on Nexus 4 phones running Android 5.0.1 and it is popping up on other Nexus devices. It seems to be part of Play Services and is not part of the core OS.

No word when, or even if, other Android manufacturers will integrate On-Body Detection into their flavors of the operating system.

Via Android Police. Photo by Kārlis Dambrāns (Janitors)/flickr.