Future Pixel phone displays might be able to detect environmental conditions

If you typically work from home or office, chances are you can interact with your phone’s display just fine. But for those who work in more extreme environments, it’s not quite as straightforward. This is why it’s pretty cool that future Pixel phones could come with adaptive touch displays.

This is according to an APK teardown by Mishaal Rahman over at Android Police. The teardown of the Android 14 QPR3 Beta 1 reveals a new feature called “adaptive touch”. This is where the phone can use its sensors to detect the environmental conditions and change its sensitivity accordingly.

This seems like an extension of the Pixel 8’s screen protector detection feature. The phone can detect when a screen protector is added and will prompt users to enable the mode. It remains unclear how this adaptive touch feature will operate since it hasn’t been fully enabled yet. There is speculation that it could assist in situations where the Pixel displays are wet, or if it is particularly cold.

While most of us probably won’t really take advantage of this feature, it’s good to see that it could be an option for users who might need it. That being said, it’s important to note that Google sometimes introduces new features in its beta versions only to remove them later on, so we’ll have to wait and see if this feature makes the final cut.