Will Pixel 9 Change How You Interact with Your Phone? Google’s Adaptive Touch Might

Phones are very smart; however, phone displays aren’t. It can be tough for your phone’s display to differentiate between your finger and raindrops. This is why companies are coming out with new ways to adjust phone sensitivity for different environmental scenarios. Google is working on a way of doing so, according to a new report. The Pixel 9 may debut with Google’s Adaptive Touch feature.

There are some phones with screen technology that can adapt to different circumstances. For example, the OnePlus 12 (Review) has its Aqua Touch display that makes it easy to use under heavy rain. Even the Pixel 8 Pro (Review) has a screen protector detector that will know when you apply a screen protector to your phone. However, it appears that Google wants to take this to the next level.

The Pixel 9 might come with an Adaptive Touch feature

This information should be taken with a grain of salt, as it was discovered in the Android 14 QPR 3 Beta. Mishaal Ramen (via Android Authority) did an APK deep dive into the latest version of Android. As such, there is no guarantee that this feature will come. We’ll have to wait and see.

However, the code hints at a feature that will automatically detect different scenarios. When the phone detects them, it will adjust the screen sensitivity accordingly. So, if you are outside, and it happens to rain, the phone could, theoretically, detect that it is raining and adjust the screen sensitivity so that it can better ignore the raindrops. Right now, we don’t know the specific scenarios that will trigger this feature. However, rain seems to be the most likely scenario.

What will make this feature nope worthy is the fact that it will most likely be completely automatic. Other phones typically require you to go into your settings and turn on a high-sensitivity mode. Well, by the way this feature sounds, it appears that it will trigger automatically. Also, we know that Google is big on automation, so it seems likely that Google will make this an automatic feature.

This might be coming with a Pixel 9, not the Pixel 8a

One thing noted by Rahmen is the fact that, in the code, this feature is referred to as P24. Internally, Google’s devices are sometimes referred to with the letter “P” followed by the year the device was released. For example, the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro were referred to as P23, as they were released in the year 2023. The Pixel 7a was also released in 2023, but that phone was designated with the name P23_MIDYEAR.

So, since the Adaptive Touch feature was labeled P24, it appears that it will be exclusive to the Pixel 9 phones. Hopefully, it will come to both models and not be blocked from the base Pixel 9 due to “hardware limitations.”