X

This Android 12 Feature Makes Reading in Bed a Little Easier

It can be annoying when your screen rotates while you're lying down, but there's a trick to fix that.

Andrew Lanxon Editor At Large, Lead Photographer, Europe
Andrew is CNET's go-to guy for product coverage and lead photographer for Europe. When not testing the latest phones, he can normally be found with his camera in hand, behind his drums or eating his stash of home-cooked food. Sometimes all at once.
Expertise Smartphones, Photography, iOS, Android, gaming, outdoor pursuits Credentials
  • Shortlisted for British Photography Awards 2022, Commended in Landscape Photographer of the Year 2022
Andrew Lanxon
2 min read
img-3651
Andrew Hoyle/CNET

There are many Android phones on the market, but the newest are Samsung's Galaxy S22, S22 Plus and S22 Ultra. Announced at the company's February Unpacked event (alongside the Galaxy Tab S8), the three phones have different specs and price points, but offer significant upgrades to last year's Galaxy S21. They even run on Android 12, and will likely offer a neat feature to fix your screen's annoying autorotate function while lying in bed. 

how-to-tech-tips-logo-badge.png

Android 12, which started rolling out following the Pixel 6 launch in 2021, uses face detection to see the position of your face relative to your phone and will keep the orientation locked to whatever angle your face is in even if the phone flips on its side. So if you're reading a web page or a book in bed and roll over, the phone should recognize that you're still looking at it vertically and won't flip the screen around. Here's how to turn it on.

android-12-tech-tips-6

Make sure both toggles are over to the right.

Andrew Hoyle/CNET

First, head into your settings and scroll down to Display. In there, scroll down and tap on "Auto-rotate screen."

In this submenu you'll see the option to turn autorotate off completely, as well as a new toggle to enable face detection. Make sure both toggles are turned on. 

Now your phone should still autorotate when you turn the phone on its side, but if the phone turns because you're lying down, it should recognize this and keep things the right way up for you.

For more, check out how the Galaxy S22 compares to the iPhone 13, Pixel 6, and Galaxy S21 FE.

Watch this: Samsung Galaxy S22 first look: Hands-on with all 3 new phones