Three More Android 12 Features Surfaced as Leaks

Last updated June 14, 2021
Written by:
Bill Toulas
Bill Toulas
Cybersecurity Journalist

Android 12 is still quite far from being officially released, but as the data for the first alpha release approaches, more leaks surface online, courtesy of XDA Developers. According to the latest additions on the Android enthusiasts' site, we should expect three new amazing features that are going to make a difference in how we’re using our smartphones on a daily basis. These are a new “one-handed” mode, a “game” mode, and a smart auto-rotate system.

Starting with the “one-handed” mode, this one is obviously introduced to make navigating the UI on 6.5” screens easier. There’s literally no small screen in the Android market right now, and for many people, that’s too big for their fingers to handle. Possibly, it’s going to involve something like shrinking the screen down to 40% of its normal size, bringing everything in one corner and within reach of the user’s thumb. For example, Huawei has had this for a while now, but it’s going to come to all Android devices with the release of version 12.

The game mode is a new mode that will enable users who like to play games on their smartphones to activate a particular set of settings that accommodate optimized gaming on their devices. These could be relevant to performance, thermals, resource capturing limits, brightness, auto-rotation, “do not disturb”, etc., but we don’t know anything specific about it at this point.

Finally, the smart auto-rotate is going to give a definitive solution to the problem of orientating your device’s screen right. Instead of relying on the phone’s gyroscope and accelerometer, the phones will now also use the front cameras to figure out the user’s head orientation. Based on inputs from all sensors, an AI will decide when it makes sense to rotate and when it doesn’t. Huawei did something similar on the Mate 30, with its system relying on the user’s eyes. However Google does it, it will be a convenient feature.

As we warned the last time we covered Android 12 rumors, all of the above are based on unofficial sources that haven’t been confirmed yet. Thus, we may see these features land with the OS, postponed, canceled, or rolled out only on the Pixels. That said, don’t take any of the above for granted.



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