The One UI/Android Pie beta for the Galaxy S9 comes with a number of small yet useful features. One of these is the Lift to wake gesture, which does exactly what the name suggests. When enabled, Lift to wake allows you to check your lockscreen for notifications and other information by simply bringing the phone up in front of your face.
‘Lift to wake' gesture works great with biometric authentication
The Lift to wake gesture is especially useful if you unlock your device via biometric options like Intelligent Scan or the iris sensor. That's because you can now have the phone start scanning your eyes and/or face by just lifting it up, instead of having the press the power key to turn the screen on. And if you disable the need for swiping on the lock screen for the biometrics to work, Lift to wake makes the unlocking process even faster.
In fact, in our testing, the iris sensor sometimes started scanning even before the screen was turned on. Of course, the fingerprint sensor is still the fastest way to unlock the Galaxy S9 or Galaxy S9+. But the Lift to wake gesture is nice to have, and it's good to see Samsung finally bringing it to its smartphones. It also works great despite this being the first Android Pie beta release.
You can find the Lift to wake gesture option in the Advanced features » Motions and gestures menu in the phone's Settings app. Do try it out if you're running the One UI beta and tell us how it works for you by leaving a comment. And for more on what's new with Android Pie and One UI, check out our ongoing coverage in the One UI (Android Pie) feature focus series of posts.
