Replacing ACTION_SCREEN_ON withy ACTION_USER_PRESENT?

Question

I have a long-running service listening for sensor input. To conserve battery power, I've stopped the sampling of the sensors on ACTION_SCREEN_OFF and started it back up again on ACTION_SCREEN_ON.

Often, however, I just turn my phone on for a quick glance at the clock on the lock-screen (to check the current time) and then turn it off again without unlocking the phone. In that case, there's no reason to spin up the sensors just to shut then down again at once.

So therefore I tried replacing ACTION_SCREEN_ON with ACTION_USER_PRESENT in my broadcast listener. This worked fine except for one special case: When the screen goes off and I press the power button (or home button) at once, the lock screen is skipped. And then the ACTION_USER_PRESENT is never received, only the ACTION_SCREEN_ON.

Is there a way for me broadcast receiver, upon receiving an ACTION_SCREEN_ON to know if the screen-lock is active and to expect a ACTION_USER_PRESENT later? Or if the lock-screen is skipped, not to wait upon ACTION_USER_PRESENT and go ahead and restart the sampling at once?

Answer 1

Till Android 4.4, if screen is turned on and lock screen is disabled, only ACTION_SCREEN_ON is fired. From Android 5.0, in this case, both ACTION_SCREEN_ON and ACTION_USER_PRESENT are fired.