What is Ambient display?

[Jonas]

Hello everyone!

Ambient display is a new feature on the Xperia XZ3 and you can read more about it here.

Please let us know what you think about this new feature!

[jeff84]

Hi Jonas, 

To be very honest I'm really struggling with it. I'm constantly unlocking my phone by accident and pressing loads of random keys thereafter. I lock my phone by pressing the home button then as I'm putting it in my pocket my phone unlocks (a very slippery phone that is almost entirely 'screen' makes it difficult to avoid pressing any active areas). Sometimes I don't notice it and then proceed to accidentaly make a mess in the UI somehow. I've done this on at least 5 occasions in the last 2 days. The setting that stops random presses is active on my phone - but that, I assume, requires the screen to be locked before it actions. Ambient Display and Smart Lock often means the screen immediately transitions to Ambient Screen as soon as I have pressed the lock button. Presumably because it's detecting movement from my hand as I move it to my pocket when I press the lock button?

I just don't get the point of the Ambient screen. Why not combine it with the lock screen which displays time and notifications anyway? Why not just allow 'smart lock' to call upon the lock splash screen if so desired? 

Double-tap to wake was such an awesome feature on my XZ. I could double tap my black, locked screen and it would come alive and display all that useful info (time, notifications) but remain locked. Then I'd simply swipe to unlock (or press the perfectly postioned XZ finger scanner on the side). Clean and simple, as unlocking a phone should be.

Now there is a whole extra layer I must get through to simply unlock my phone. If I want 'double-tap to wake' enabled then you are forcing me to use this Ambient display which in-turn requires a delay before double-tapping again to get to the lock screen otherwise it won't register the 3rd and 4th taps.. I don't want Ambient Display but I do want double-tap to wake. 'Double-tap to wake' has now become 'double-tap-wait2secs-double-tap-again to wake' and that's before having to perform whichever unlock method has been saved. 

I can't see any reason whatsover not to give the lockscreen the same functionality as the ambient screen. Why do we need 2 layers of lock screen? 

[Darbo25]

I really like it, saves pressing the power button every time I want to check the time, looks smart as well. 

[Lord_viridis]

Love it, less key presses for quick info can only be a good thing.

[Vildar]

Love the ambient display. Would be very nice if it was possible to have it in landscape mode. As if you had it on your bedside table. 

That was a nice thing with the older Xperias. While they didn't have ambient display, they had a clock mode when it went into charging. That changed orientation if you had a flip/stand case 

[jeff84]

But more key presses to get to anything beyond a clock. Kinda frustrating, no?

Something else I've noticed about Ambient Screen which seems very unintuitive to me - If the screen is active (which it is with Ambient Screen) then I would expect pressing home botton to deactivate the screen. Seems backwards to activate an active screen, no? There is no way to turn off the screen whilst Ambient Screen is active is there?...just have to wait for it to turn off? Not a great battery saver.

I am still unsure why the Ambient Screen functionality couldn't be applied to the lock screen instead. So you could still lift the phone which would display the lock screen (clock, notifications, and swipe up). Then it's only a swipe to unlock, cutting out a whole extra layer of tapping, swipping, whatever. You could decide to have a background or not for the sake of battery-saving. Would be much cleaner IMO.

[Florin79]

Hello, ambient display does not work does not respond to any option that I choose, what i need to do ?

[Strampke]

Did you read the manual ?

[Ted05]

I love the ambient display feature - so handy to be able to check the time/messages quickly, and I like how it shows the album art when playing music.

[Jonas]

Hi @Ted05, that's awesome to hear and I totally agree with you!

Thank you for your feedback and have a fantastic day!