Throughout the year we hear a lot of rumours about what the year’s Nexus device will or won’t have. This year was no difference and while it seems that most of them did arrive in an amazing device that is the Nexus 6P there is one notable omission, double tap to wake. The Nexus 6 had it on leaked versions but come release day it was absent with Google favouring Ambient Display instead. It seems this is no different for the Nexus 6P. There is no way of waking the device without picking it up or using the power button, until now.
Today, well known developer of the ElementalX Kernel, flar2 (disclaimer: I use his kernels on at least 5 other devices in my household) released the first alpha version of his kernel for the Nexus 6P. As per usual I was only too happy to give the first custom kernel released for the Nexus 6P a try. Not long after flar2 noticed code for double tap to wake lying dormant within the kernel source, and he did what any self-respecting developer would do in this case. He turned it on and shared it with the community.
The code to turn it on is not a simple one to input, but simple copy and paste into your favourite terminal will do the trick:
echo 1 > /sys/devices/soc.0/f9924000.i2c/i2c-2/2-0070/input/input0/wake_gesture #
with superuser access granted to the terminal app (type in su and hit enter before entering the above code).
Using the code into a terminal will not survive a reboot. Since this morning, he has added the code for it to his kernel control app, Ex Kernel Manager, (which also allows you to control vibration strength and the colour calibration of the display) to allow you to select DT2W to enable it and to hit the power button next to this to enable it on boot. So the answer is to fork out a few dollars for his app or to input this code yourself upon each boot.
Will this affect mod affect your battery life? Unlikely it will affect it much, if at all, due to the low power core being used for these functions. When asked if the device would still be able to “Doze” properly his answer was:
Probably. All the kernel needs to do is what it normally does: enter suspend (ie, deep sleep). Doze is a userspace thing, where Android restricts background operations by apps and services to specific time windows.
Once again the Nexus devices show why they are a modder/hacker’s dream. Having the full source code allows enterprising developers to extend the device’s limits and allow it to do things that Google didn’t include. So if you like using DT2W and own a Nexus 6P then head on over to XDA and flash the custom kernel, ElementalX-N6P by flar2 and enjoy.
For Nexus 5X users, though, this code isn’t included in the Nexus 5X kernel, so for now it remains a Nexus 6P-only feature.
Note: you will need to be rooted and have a custom recovery installed before being able to flash this kernel.
As always we here at Ausdroid do not take any responsibility to what you do to your phone. It is your own responsibility and you undertake the above instructions at your own risk. In saying that, if you do have any issues feel free to contact us and we will endeavour to help you fix it- ask over on our Google+ Community Page.
Thanks for clarifying re 5X. That’s a shame.