The flight modeapart from some third-party apps, has always been a feature to manually toggle on and off Android. Apparently, the developers of Google they would be working to change all that.
In a document relating to a patent of the Mountain View giant, a hint of a new feature appeared, called “Connect Flight Mode“. This, apparently, would concern all types of mobile devices, be they smartphone, tablet o laptop.
All this could mean that the function in question is able to detect when the user is on a plane and activate the appropriate mode in a completely automatic way. According to the leaked text “in response to determining that the sensor detects information indicating how the mobile computing device is on the aircraft“. Likewise, once off the aircraft, the feature would deactivate without manual intervention.
Android’s new airplane mode? May leave Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned on
According to what was leaked, this system should support connections Wi-Fi e Bluetooth. The user can therefore continue to be connected to the network, while the normal airplane mode switches them off together with the cellular network.
The patent contains information that the new Airplane Mode would act by configuring the Wi-Fi settings to suit the specific type of connection accepted by the specific flight.
Additionally, the mode may allow your device to manage Wi-Fi settings to ensure usage. In fact, actions like automatic backups, app updates in the background and the like would be disabled when this mode is activated.
Since this is only a patent, there is no guarantee that this feature will actually be made public. Google and many other companies file patents all the time, and only a small percentage of them materialize.