The one reason I regret upgrading to Lollipop on a Nexus 5

A couple weeks back I upgraded my phone to the most recent version of Android – Lollipop.

I’m more of a savoury snacks kind of guy myself, but I’ll go with the candy motif anyways.

Overall I’m very happy with the OS upgrade – Material design is one of those things that works a lot better in practice. Every screenshot I saw in advance gave me a very ‘meh’ reaction, but it’s generally well thought out and a decent user experience, better than KitKat in almost every way.

The one way it isn’t better?

Well that has to do with an app that doesn’t play well with Lollipops security upgrades for user passwords.

Gravity screen is one of those apps that does something so simple you wonder what the point is, until you get used to it.

I want this behaviour in every smartphone I own from here on out, it’s one of those obvious in retrospect functions that should just be available on every phone.

Here’s what gravity screen does: if the phone is turned upside down and the proximity sensor is covered (i.e. it’s put in a pocket) it turns the phone off. If the phone is turned right side up and the proximity sensor is uncovered (i.e. it’s taken out of your pocket) the phone turns on.

I know, I know, turning on your phone is so easy right? but it’s even easier when your phone just responds to the way you want to use it and you don’t have to think about telling it you want it ‘awake’ or ‘asleep’.

Unfortunately lollipop seems to have partly broken Gravity Screen when used with a password and it looks like something only google can fix.

After using my phone this way for a bit over a year, I find it offensive to have to wake up a ‘smart phone’ manually.  I hope that something can be done to make gravity screen work with passwords in Lollipop, or at least I hope to see this basic functionality integrated into future smart phones.