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I set my phone screen to lock so that it won’t rotate. I know people put effort into the fancy sensors and software so the phone can have that feature, but it needs one more enhancement before I’ll use it.

Here is my use case – I’m lying on my side (on a couch, in bed, whatever) and I’m holding the phone. What should the phone do?

Here is the feature as the phone companies tout it (look! the phone screen knows which way is up!):

But here is how it works for me:

As you can see, when I lie on my side, the screen no longer matches me. Now I have to tilt my head awkwardly. Or disable screen rotation so that the phone doesn’t think it is smarter than I am (no, trust me – this is what you want, even though you don’t want it).

My proposal: Use the secondary camera match the screen orientation to the user, not to gravity

The new phones these days have cameras that can see the user. And they have facial recognition algorithms that should be able to know the angle of the person’s head. If the phone is tilted and the user’s head is tilted the same amount and direction, then don’t rotate the screen.

Bryan Logan, make it so.

P.S. – see about a NASA grant, because this technology would also apply to zero-gravity situations when the phone’s sensor can’t tell which way is up.