Pixel phones will soon get a smarter AOD that saves battery life

At the cost of some battery life, your phone’s always-on display (AOD) feature lets you see the time and new notifications at a glance. While most Android phones have an AOD, it doesn’t behave the same way on every device. Some phones let you schedule the AOD to benefit from its glanceable information without unnecessarily draining the battery. Pixel phones, however, offer no such controls — the AOD is either always on or always off during the day. Fortunately, Google is working on a new setting that will soon give Pixel users more control over this feature.

Earlier today, Google released a new Android Canary build. While its most visible change is a redesigned flashlight brightness slider, a look under the hood reveals that Google is also working on AOD enhancements. Code within the Settings app points to a new option to “turn off display on inactivity,” which “powers down the display when no user activity is detected to save power.” The string names confirm this new setting is for the AOD:

“Doze” is Android’s internal code-name for the ambient display feature. Thus, we suspect this setting will appear under Settings > Display > Always-on display, though it isn’t live yet in the 2510 Android Canary release.

The current AOD options on the Pixel 10 series.

Unfortunately, the code also doesn’t specify how Android will determine user activity or how long the phone must be inactive before the feature kicks in. We can look to Samsung’s implementation for a potential blueprint, though. Samsung phones offer an “auto” AOD option that disables the display when the phone is face down, in a dark place like a pocket for several minutes, or when it detects the user is asleep. While it’s unknown if Google will adopt the same triggers, it’s possible they will be similar.

Regardless, it’s great to see Google finally adding more control over the AOD on Pixel phones. When the company introduced AOD wallpaper support on the new Pixel 10 series, we hoped it was just the beginning of a more customizable experience, and it appears we were right. Hopefully, these new power-saving options won’t be limited to new Pixel devices and will also be made available on existing ones.