Android 15 will allow you to turn off the screen without locking
Today, Android doesn’t provide an alternative: a turned-off screen means the phone is locked, making it impossible to run some apps. For such applications, you have to keep the screen on, wasting battery power. Android 15 will allow you to turn off the screen without locking the phone so that applications continue to work but the screen does not light up, saving battery power.
The new feature is called Adaptive Timeout. However, this feature may be limited to Pixel devices, at least initially. In the future, it may become available for all Android phones that can run Android 15. That is, if Google introduces Adaptive Timeout at all after the launch of Android 15.
Adaptive timeout detects if the user is looking at the display and turns off the screen if not. But if you turn off the display faster than usual, you’ll get better battery life. Your smartphone consumes less power when the screen is off.
The Contextual Timeout feature will work faster than the 15- or 30-second auto-lock setting in the Screen Timeout option, which you can use now. If your phone detects that you are not using it or looking at it, it should lock immediately.
It is unclear which sensors Android 15 uses for adaptive timeout. Maybe it’s the selfie camera, maybe it’s the way the user interacts with the content on the screen, or maybe it’s an algorithm that takes into account several factors.
