New feature in Galaxy Note 2: Smart Rotation

The Galaxy Note 2, with its large 5.5 inch HD screen and stunning display would seem like the perfect device to consume all forms of visual media, be it movies, ebooks, or just plain simple web-browsing. Of course, there have been other large screen devices with equivalent horsepower under the hood in recent times, but this time around Samsung has added a nifty little feature called Smart Rotation which makes the Note II something to take “note” of.

Normally when you’re reading something on your smartphone screen and shift the device orientation, knowingly or unknowingly, the display would automatically rotate accordingly, depending on the physical rotation of the device, if Auto-Rotation is enabled. Now this could be particularly irritating, if you are an avid e-book reader, especially one like me who does most of his reading in bed. The Smart Rotation feature on the Note II takes care of this.

Smart Rotation uses the front-facing camera to detect what orientation your face is at, and automatically matches the rotation of the display with it. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a particularly useful feature for folks who love reading e-books, or watching a video while lying down in bed. In fact, it even works at angles, which makes it all the more useful. A human feature in a smartphone; now that’s truly smart!!

The feature is disabled by default, but can easily be turned on from the Display Settings menu. Keep in mind though that since this feature uses the front-facing camera, it might not be completely effective in total darkness, and would need some amount of ambient light for the front facing camera to detect your face orientation. Nevertheless, it’s a nice touch by Samsung. What do you guys think?