Help Smart stay feature not working

[ren857]

This feature is worthless. It doesn't work inside or outside in bright sunlight staring at the phone a foot away or arms length.

This post made me LOL for some reason...

 

[ubastars]

Yeah, like we have been saying... use the front facing camera to see potential lighting issues and if facial recognition working is a good indicator of when it will and will not work (for testing). Where I work I can have facilities turn the light above me down a little and that will help significantly.

If it is not working well at all, take the battery out for one minute. If it is still bad even in good conditions you might be unlucky and need an replacement phone.

One day it will be kinect quality sensors in phones .

 

[ubastars]

Just had another thought... it is possible that an anti-glare screen protector, if covering the camera aperture, might also help, by reducing the lens flare/light bloom effect of having a bright light behind your much darker face.

Hard to test, not like you can start popping open packets at your local store and taking photos haha.

 

[Shocky]

Working fine here, however does not work in low light conditions and your phone needs to be at the right angle.

 

[scooz16]

Anyone else having issues with it working too well?

Just today i put it down on the couch and its about 2 feet away and facing the ceiling...the eye comes up and the screen stays on when I dont want it to. Had to turn it off

 

[mikes1]

I don't know why you would be having issues with it. I have my screen timeout set to 15 seconds because that is all I really need. The eye comes up every 10 seconds to see if I am looking at it and every time it works perfectly when it should. It's even worked in very very dim light surprisingly. Everybody I have showed this feature to has been totally wowed by it. Just make sure you move your eyes a bit I guess when the eye pops up. It has never failed for me yet

 

[Krunk83]

Anyone else having issues with it working too well?

Just today i put it down on the couch and its about 2 feet away and facing the ceiling...the eye comes up and the screen stays on when I dont want it to. Had to turn it off

I think it gets confused in certain lighting. Happens to me too but I'm not turning it off. It works more than not.

 

[snilloconator]

Works fine here.

 

[ubastars]

I must say... Now that it works OK I take my hat off to companies that work on features like this that, when it works, goes unnoticed, but makes a nice improvment to function when it silently does it's job

 

[Mr4X4]

One thing I have noticed is that this feature's success will vary with surrounding conditions. Lighting factors a major part in it. Another thing for me personally is I wear a lot of baseball caps and the shadow cast by the brim of the cap seems to affect the facial recognition. Depending on angle and thickness of glasses, these also can have an effect. As for the people that can't get it to work at all.... Maybe there is just no life in your eyes and the phone thinks you are dead? Lol

 

[mrbutters]

Lighting conditions and angles don't matter to mine i guess. Wont even work in bright sunlight, sucks

 

[Zoandroid]

I didn't see bifocals mentioned as I read this thread, so here is what we (my son just got an S3 as well) discovered last night. For him, it works very well, all the time (he wears contacts).

For me, sitting in a recliner while testing......I wear no-line bifocals. When you get to the age where you need bifocals, over time you learn to raise your chin and look through the lower part of the lenses as needed, without even thinking about doing it. And with the progressive style (no-line) bifocals, I will adjust my head angle automatically to 'dial in the best focus' depending on the distance I am from what I am seeing.

That said, I could not get smart stay to work at all......until I removed my glasses. Then it worked just great, because I was no longer raising my chin and putting my face at an angle to the phone. I put my glasses back on, but deliberately looked through the upper part of the lenses (which for a nearsighted bifocal wearing person means so blurry you can't read what you are looking at when it is close) and it works great. But when I raise my chin to get the screen in focus, the angle is sufficient that it throws off the face tracking and smart stay is very hit or miss (mostly miss) even in decent lighting.

So it appears to work very well.........except for those of us with bifocals. I wonder if Samsung could find a way to expand the 'cone' of detection to allow for more angle between one's face and the screen to accommodate us?

Regarding the screen dimming part - it appears that the smart stay icon comes up, and if it does NOT think you are looking at the screen, it dims (as a warning I guess) and then cycles through your screen-off delay time setting once more. The eye icon comes up again at the end of that time span, and it if still doesn't think you are looking, then it turns off the display. While testing without my glasses, the screen never dimmed when the eye icon would show up, and it did indeed keep the display lit even with a 15 second setting.

 

[exwifeusesiphone]

Even more than lightning, I think you guys are right about the angle.

Use the camera and try the front-facing cam. The angle of the camera is actually too straight for normal use, and this is what causes SmartStay problems. If you are standing up and both you and the cam are exactly parallel, it'll work fine.

Tilt it in a bit, and you get better results though when lying down or leaning back because of the small changes in angle. Use the front-facing cam and you'll see what I mean-your head is probably only filling the bottom 1/3rd of the screen at these kind of angles.

I usually use my phone when reclining, so that's how I've figured this out. When you see the icon pop up tilt the top of the phone toward you a little. It works great then! Even in dim light...

 

[treb1797]

I hate that this function has a mind of its own as I was really looking forward to it ( believe it or not ) , that & S Voice ( ok, don't believe that ).

 

[alexander323bc]

For you guys having trouble, have any of you done a reset to the phone? When I first got my phone, smart stay, the gallery and S voice would not work at all. Smart stay didn't even come on, My gallery would just freeze and s voice would just tell me to wake it up. After resetting the phone the day I got it its worked great since.

 

[Zoandroid]

Even more than lightning, I think you guys are right about the angle.

Use the camera and try the front-facing cam. The angle of the camera is actually too straight for normal use, and this is what causes SmartStay problems. If you are standing up and both you and the cam are exactly parallel, it'll work fine.

Tilt it in a bit, and you get better results though when lying down or leaning back because of the small changes in angle. Use the front-facing cam and you'll see what I mean-your head is probably only filling the bottom 1/3rd of the screen at these kind of angles.

I usually use my phone when reclining, so that's how I've figured this out. When you see the icon pop up tilt the top of the phone toward you a little. It works great then! Even in dim light...

I can confirm this suggestion of using the front camera to see precisely how to position your face in the center of the screen, AND to keep the phone screen completely parallel to your face, at eye level, does make it work, even with wearing bifocals and dealing with them to get the screen in focus. But.........holding the phone exactly like that is completely unnatural, so I would never do it. I'll speculate the design engineers who cooked this up did exactly that, and never gave a thought to how different people hold their phone 'comfortably'. They likely had it mounted in some sort of bracket perfectly aligned with their face while testing and developing. Great idea, poorly implemented. It needs a larger margin of error zone to allow less than perfect visual alignment. I just keep it disabled, myself.

 

[billrosenblatt]

I've had mixed results. At first it didn't work at all, then I took one poster's advice and did a soft reset (pull battery, wait for at least 30 sec, then replace battery and turn unit on), and it did work... some of the time. It does depend on ambient lighting.

I think this is just one of those features that Samsung needs to tweak in a software update, now that the phone is in millions of hands in the real world and not just in a test lab or focus group. Other features that I put in this category include S Voice (good voice recognition, lousy interpretation), screen auto-brightness (way too dim), and the camera's autofocus (also doesn't work sometimes).

Hope you're looking at this, Samsung. Otherwise, awesome phone!

 

[shingleb]

It won't work with my glasses... works ok if I take them off. Could be the transition lenses, tested it inside at night in a well lit room.

 

[ubastars]

Yes, it could be improved if the camera was a few degrees off. maybe even with a fish-eye or concave lens over the camera (or dedicated camera for these type of interations.

Just keep in mind it is the first time it has been done on a phone so it is a pretty good first effort.

 

[Haris]

Good news if you're on Sprint. This will address Smart Stay and a few other known issues.

Sprint Galaxy Nexus and Samsung Galaxy S3 Receive OTA Updates – EVO 4G LTE To Follow

 

[Johnnysims]

i know how smart stay works and mine worked nice. but now I notice that my screen doesn't shut down anymore. Its like the "eye" sees something watching it. and stays on

 

[Rjay60]

Does anyone know if this feature works when you are wearing eye glasses?

Yes it does for me, I wear reading glasses. I find it works the best when time out is set to 15 secs for some reason. I also find it's a bit hit and miss. I can use my phone and it will work then the next time I use the phone it wont and the screen will shut off. Hopefully Samsung will improve it at some point with a software update because its a handy feature. I also believe that it does not work with every app.

 

[sshafqat]

Anyone else having issues with it working too well?

Just today i put it down on the couch and its about 2 feet away and facing the ceiling...the eye comes up and the screen stays on when I dont want it to. Had to turn it off

I am having the same issue that most of the times it doesn't turn off the screen. SmartStay is useless for me.