Turn The Nexus 5 Into A Moto X With Touchless Controls?

A Nexus 5 touchless control ROM proof of concept video has been posted on YouTube. The video shows the Nexus 5 displaying Moto X-like capabilities by utilizing the always-listening core of the Snapdragon 800 processor.  You can watch the video (HERE). The video understandably caused a great deal of excitement on the Google+ as users of the Nexus 5 excitedly anticipated the opportunity to download the custom ROM and give themselves Moto X capabilities.

The developer explained that he tapped into the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800’s QDSP6V5 low-power DSP core. The Snapdragon 800 has separate cores used for different applications. So this should allow the always-listening feature to be added to the Moto X without having too much impact on battery life or brining the CPU out of its sleep state. Of course Google has had some trouble with that recently, particularly following the Android 4.4.2 KitKat update which has resulted in a battery drain bug related to the camera. Still the promise of Moto X-like capabilities for the Nexus 5 is a very exciting feature.

Unfortunately the designer Guillaume Lesniak has said that he doesn’t want to release details the modification since Qualcomm hasn’t released the always-listening API of the Snapdragon 800 to developers. The designer is concerned about potential legal troubles with Qualcomm though as the creator of Omni ROM there is a possibility that it might get the feature provided Qualcomm doesn’t have a problem with it. Phandroid suggests that Qualcomm may be choosing not to release it on behalf of a future Nexus device or other Android device. That could also be a possibility.

This is just a proof of concept showing that Always-On Listening capabitilies are existing and working on the Nexus 5. It's running a highly customized build of OmniROM.

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Turning your Nexus 5 into a Moto X: Always-On Listening When the Nexus 5 came around, a lot of people asked whether or not it would have a very popular feature of the Moto X: it's famous "Ok Google Now" wake-up hotword. People wondered if the MSM8974 chipset of the Nexus 5 supported Always-On Listening, considering various information from Qualcomm. Well, here's your answer: Nexus 5 - Always-On Listening Proof of Concept The hardware is there and the software is capable of handling it. It's far from being stable, and not releaseable in the current state (for various reasons). This is only just a proof-of-concept to show that it's possible. I hope to be able to bring it to more people in the future, but not in the meantime. EDIT: To further clarify, this is indeed using the dedicated audio processing chip of the S800 - that's the whole point of this PoC. The CPU is indeed turned off and isn't used at all for the audio processing.