While Motorola may have introduced the Always On Ambient Display concept to the world of Android, it was Samsung that made it popular. It’s become such an integral feature of the experience of Samsung phones that developers have attempted to mimic the feature for other devices with AMOLED displays to use.
Now it looks like Google may be hopping on the trend for the next line of Pixel phones.
The folks over at XDA Developers got their hands on the SystemUIGoogle.apk in the latest Android O Developer Preview 3 and they found some interesting code that suggests references to an always on ambient display feature. The code references something called “doze”, but the author is quick to note that Android engineers have a confusing internal naming scheme and this doesn’t refer to the classic Android Marshmallow Doze feature.
This is definitely an interesting turn of events and it would seem to suggest that the next Pixel phones will be using AMOLED displays. Only a handful of Google phones haven’t in the history of the Nexus line, so it will be interesting to see if this is one of those “Pixel-only” features that ships on the next series of flagships.
What do you think? Do you like using ambient displays or do you turn the feature off?
Comments