New convenient On-Body Unlock feature added to Android

What if I say there’s a new on-body detection in android version 5.0 and up, which lets you unlock your device without having to re-enter your pin over and over again, so long as the smartphone or tablet is near your sorrounding area.

Well this convenient feature is real, an option that can be enabled and let you easily access your device, adding yet another option to Android’s growing ways to make device less painful.

Much like Apple, a key convenience feature came to the iPhone (and iPad, later) thanks to Touch ID, which allows unlock with a simple touch with the thumb on the home button. This enhanced device security largely because many people who didn’t like the pin option could use the fingerprint option instead, since it lowered the friction required for the unlock process immensely.

Android’s new feature introduced in Lollipop, have a similar intent, but with a very different approach to the problem. The new options are now available and don’t require any special hardware (they use a device’s camera, Bluetooth radio, GPS, and accelerometer) and can be enabled in a number of ways based on a user’s preference and comfort. For example, You could activate Trusted Places and not On-Body Detection, or just Trusted Devices, or Trusted Places and Trusted Devices and On-Body Detection, and so on.

On-body detection is not fool-proof – by quickly handing over your phone to someone else is not going break the unlock and require the PIN once again, for instance. But it’s still a forward step in making a device more aware of sorroundings in terms of their level of security, and is mainly designed primarily as a convenience feature that’s likely aimed more at people who normally dislike inputting passcodes and unlock patterns.