Phone Screen Rotation

I set my phone screen to lock so that it won’t rotate. I know people put effort into the fancy sensors and software so the phone can have that feature, but it needs one more enhancement before I’ll use it.

Here is my use case – I’m lying on my side (on a couch, in bed, whatever) and I’m holding the phone. What should the phone do?

Here is the feature as the phone companies tout it (look! the phone screen knows which way is up!):

diagram of how phone screen orientation moves when the phone is tilted

But here is how it works for me:

diagram of how phone screen orientation moves improperly when the phone is tilted when the user is also tilted

As you can see, when I lie on my side, the screen no longer matches me. Now I have to tilt my head awkwardly. Or disable screen rotation so that the phone doesn’t think it is smarter than I am (no, trust me – this is what you want, even though you don’t want it).

My proposal: Use the secondary camera match the screen orientation to the user, not to gravity

diagram of how phone screen orientation should move when the phone is tilted

The new phones these days have cameras that can see the user. And they have facial recognition algorithms that should be able to know the angle of the person’s head. If the phone is tilted and the user’s head is tilted the same amount and direction, then don’t rotate the screen.

Bryan Logan, make it so.

P.S. – see about a NASA grant, because this technology would also apply to zero-gravity situations when the phone’s sensor can’t tell which way is up.

When they moved, they went in any of their four directions without turning as they went; but they followed in the direction which they faced, without turning as they went.

Ezekiel 10:11

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This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 6:08 am and has been carefully placed in the Technical category.

One Response to “Phone Screen Rotation”

  1. Ricky Anderson Says:

    I was thinking “Bryan could fix that.”

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