40 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 68
rather than a camera, which is part of why we’re stuck
with that bonkers bezel.
Even so, for the most part it’s still limited to the
same stuff LG offered: waving your hand to skip songs
or silence an alarm. For the most part it works well,
but it’s still rare that a gesture control feels faster or
easier than the screen, and about half the time I set
my phone down on the table after starting a song it
would accidentally register my hand moving away
from the phone as a swipe to skip the track, meaning
I’ve missed an awful lot of first tracks on albums.
Not every app will be compatible with gesture
controls – though Spotify at least is, so there’s some
third-party support – but a faint glow at the top of
the screen lets you know when gesture controls
are supported, to save you from waving your arm
round in vain.
There is more interesting stuff that the radar is used
for, but you’re less likely to notice. One option sees
it detect your presence, turning off the always-on
display to conserve battery if it can tell you’re not near
the phone. This works well, and is a neat idea, even if
it’s occasionally annoying when you want to glance at
your notifications from a little too far away.
Then there’s the face unlock. The radar detects
when you reach to pick up the phone, turning on the
face unlock sensors so that it’s ready to recognize
you straightaway. It’s a slightly cheeky way of making
this the fastest face unlock on the market, but it
does work – it feels so instant that I usually didn’t
even have to think about unlocking the phone, and
Google has even included an option to stop it skipping
