Samsung Galaxy S5: How to Enable and Use Smart Stay in Android 4.4.2 Kitkat

Have you ever felt annoyed if the screen turned off while you were reading e-book or long web post? If that so, you can save yourself from this problem by increasing the screen timeout and enable the smart stay feature in your phone. This feature will utilize the front camera to help you tell the phone to keep the screen stays on as long as you're looking at it.


How to enable or disable smart stay?
You can enable or disable the smart stay feature through the quick settings panel or through the settings menu. If you'd like the faster method, then you can do so through the quick settings panel.

Method #1: From the quick settings panel

1. Swipe down the top of the screen using two fingers to open up the quick settings panel.
2. Depending on your current settings, tap Smart stay button to enable or disable the smart stay feature. When the button shows green means the smart stay feature is enabled.

Method #2: From the settings menu

1. Swipe down the top of the screen to open up the notifications panel.
2. Tap to go to the settings menu.
3. With the settings menu is displayed in grid view, scroll down to the Sound and display section and then tap Display .
4. Depending on your current settings, tap the Smart stay option to enable or disable it. When the checkbox in the left side of the smart stay option is checked means the smart stay feature is enabled.
5. If necessary, you can also tap Screen timeout and then select the longest or highest screen timeout value (5 minutes or 10 minutes).

How to use smart stay?
Since the smart stay feature works by utilizing the front camera thus you have to ensure that it's not being used by other apps while you're using the smart stay feature and make sure to hold the phone steady and upright in a well-lit environment but the screen is not in direct light so that the phone can detect your face with more easily. To make it easier, you can see the example on how to use this feature while reading a long web post in Internet app in the following steps:

1. Open Internet app.
2. Open a webpage by entering URL in the address bar and then tap Go.
3. While you're reading, within a certain time (it depends on screen timeout value on your phone) you'll see the smart stay icon is displayed on the status bar to check whether you're still looking at the screen or not by utilizing the front camera. If the front camera detects your face then the screen will stay on.

As long as the smart stay feature is not turned off, then the front camera will keep trying to detect your face when the screen timeout value is almost over. Since the checking process needs quite a lot of power, thus to save your battery life while using this feature, it'd better if you set the screen timeout value with the highest/longest one. Other way, you can turn on this feature if needed only. FYI, based on my experience, the smart stay feature in this phone works better than in other Samsung Galaxy phones because the front camera can detect my face even when I'm in the low light environment.