ISeeYou: keep your device screen from going to sleep (but only when you are using it)

One of the best and most innovative aspects of the new Samsung Galaxy SIII is actually a software feature called Smart Stay. By constantly monitoring the front facing camera in your brand new smartphone, Smart Stay detects if you are actively using it, keeping the screen from going to sleep when you are looking at it. It is one of these little things that really make a difference on how we use a smartphone on a daily basis: no more "The screen's gone black!" while we browse the web or read a document on the go. Smart Stay works by means of some facial recognition algorithm, and apparently it does the job very well.
Samsung made it very clear that all the new software features  of the Galaxy SIII would remain exclusive to that smartphone. It seems they did a pretty good job at this too, and as of today Smart Stay has not been ported to other devices. Of course this didn't keep the extremely active Android developers community away from trying to copy the app functionalities, and a first app already appeared in the Google Play Store that does exactly this.
The app is called ISeeYou, and it is basically a plain replica of Samsung's proprietary app. It is available for free, or in the pro version for only £0.50 (or half of half of half of a pint). There is not much to say about the app functionalities: once it is launched, a very simple menu appears where we can select to start the app monitoring process. A statusbar indicator is shown, to indicate that the process is running and to alert when the app is actually detecting a face. Both free and pro versions are basically identical in functionalities, but the pro allows for some advanced tweaks such as the frequency of the scans and the minimum scan time. Both these settings can impact the accuracy of the recognition and how the app affects the battery life, which means it is definitely worth considering the paid version.
We tested the app obtaining mixed results. Initially the app was working fine recognising different users in different light conditions. After some time though a few problems occurred: the app crashed when used together with Facebook or WhatsApp and force-closed a few times when the device was in standby. After a reboot, the app seems to be working fine again and no other problems occurred.  Still, it is probably better to test the free version for a few hours for full compatibility with your device before spending the money for the pro version.
The apps are available in the Google Play Store, here (free) and here (pro).