If you tend to read a lot of ebooks or long-form articles on your smartphone then you might be aware of that slight moment of panic that you have when the handset’s screen dims as a sign that the phone will put itself to sleep in 30 seconds or a minute maximum as the display times out due to inactivity. You can keep it from sleeping by tapping on the display but Android P will bring an easier way to ensuring that the device doesn’t put itself to sleep. It will use the fingerprint sensor which is increasingly being relocated to the back of smartphones by OEMs.
As more and more manufacturers opt for tall, bezel-less displays, the obvious concession they have to make is to relocate the fingerprint sensor to the back. This puts the sensor in a position that’s easily reachable when you’re holding the device as you normally would for this Android P improvement to make sense.
AndroidPolice reports that on Android P, you can touch the fingerprint sensor once the display has dimmed and the timeout will be reset. The device won’t vibrate as confirmation but the display will light up and that’s confirmation enough.
This means that you no longer have to change your location in the text that you’re reading or unnecessarily scroll the screen to prevent the device from putting itself to sleep. The scribe mentions that this doesn’t work on the first preview build of Android P on the first generation Pixel but does work with the second-generation Pixel on Android P DP2.
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