Earlier this week we watched as a few major news outlets got some quick hands-on time with both the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9. Because Google didn’t preemptively issue any review units prior to their official announcement, new info on these devices has continually been trickling in. A few days ago, we saw a screenshot taken from a leaked Android 5.0 Lollipop ROM and a setting called Ambient display which allows the Nexus 6 display to wake up whenever the phone was picked up, or when notifications arrive.
This option — while not present in the Android 5.0 Developer Preview — is just a regular ‘ol Lollipop software feature and not exclusive to the Nexus 6, as detailed by Google’s official Android Lollipop page. What was interesting was the under the feature section of the page, it not only mentions the ambient display mode, but tap-to-wake as well.
For those unaware, tap-to-wake is a feature found in many flagship Android devices and allows the user to double tap the display to wake it up instead of using the physical power button. While it may not sound like it, for larger devices it’s incredibly useful and will forever change the way you interact with your smartphone (and yet another helpful feature the iPhone 6 doesn’t offer).
Although never mentioned in any official capacity (or the hands-ons we’ve seen online), it seems this feature is fully present on the Nexus 6, as brought to light Wired’s Mat Honan. In his hands on, Honan specifically calls out the feature, although some were still left wondering if it could have been a misprint (the Nexus 9 also has tap-to-wake). We reached out to the author where he was able to confirm that yes, this is, in fact, a feature found in the Nexus 6 and was most certainly not posted in error. Boom.
This should finally lay the issue to rest and for tap-to-wake lovers who were afraid of losing out on this functionality for the Nexus 6 — fear not. Still up in the air is which non-Nexus Android devices will support the feature once Lollipop begins rolling out over the next few months.
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