I'm normally really good about locking the screen when I'm done, but something with fingerprint or face recognition or lock screen quick actions behaves poorly.
Maybe I'm not crazy. Twice in the past couple weeks, my phone has seemingly unlocked itself in my pocket and I suspected it was to do with moisture/sweat, but dismissed it as unlikely.
In the first instance, it emergency dialed. I had just hung up the phone and put it away, so I thought I hadn't secured it.
In the second instance, I hadn't touched my phone in several minutes when suddenly my podcadt was overlaid with a demo video from an executive at my company which had opened in Teams. I closed out of that and discovered an unsent text to my wife filled with gibberish and a dozen image attachments.
I have a swipe and fingerprint enabled. My best guess is the mosture is registering my leg through the pocket and swiping it unlocked in an infinite monkeys scenario. I switched to password only for my walks now and haven't had an issue since.
I received a call with my Mom, my emergency contact, because somehow my phone had pinged her or dialed her as an emergency.
Other times I pull out my phone and also see that it was doing something. Earlier today I was using google maps in a new city, I put my phone back in my pocket and when I pulled it out a few minutes later I was on an "add a new place to the map" or "mark a new place" flow.
It amazes me that the simplest thing is not done here: if proximity sensor senses your screen is covered - do not enable the screen ever.
When I'm jogging my phone sometimes sends texts, runs apps etc, same when I have phone in my pocket.
Why don't they use proximity sensor?
While it was my own doing, I can see many people having that problem to the point where Android turned off the functionality. Multiple support calls, requests to return "defective" phones, etc.
But yeah, I currently have the same issue. If my current Pixel 3a is in my slightly damp pocket, it will have tried to "monkey touching" as the post above called it.
The sensor is prone to false positives, such as when you have the phone in a waterproof pouch while hiking or boating.
This works well, until the prox sensor stops working (e.g. a piece of dust lands on it) and you can no longer get the phone screen to turn on.
It cuts both ways. :(
Unfortunately it seems easy to unlock that as well.
The biggest problems I have with this are related to the "raise to wake" and "tap to wake" features that seem to be enabled by default on all the phones I've tried including iOS devices. I think on Pixel it was called "pick up to check phone" or something else like that. Turning these off drastically reduces the number of times the phone turns on in my pocket because the power button becomes the only way to activate the screen.
On Samsung phones you additionally have to turn off a setting under Always-On display so that widgets are turned off and/or cannot receive touches, such as the music app etc.
And I'm sure I didn't push the power button because it's quite hard to press in the case I'm using (Spigen tough armor)