Google is working on showing battery health in Android

As most of you might know, a battery loses some of its capacity over time, and the one in your smartphone is no different. That means, as your phone ages, it will offer you a lower battery backup. At one point, you might have to replace the battery to continue using your smartphone without any difficulty. To let people know when it is time to do that, Apple shows the health of the battery in an iPhone in the device settings. Google, unfortunately, doesn’t offer that functionality with Android. Well, that’s going to change soon.

According to a new report from Android Authority, the latest version of the Settings Services application in Android has a new page called Battery Health. Google hasn’t made this page live yet. However, the publication was able to activate it and they found that it is made to show the health of the battery of a device and to let people know if that battery is the one that came from the company or a replaced one.

At the moment, the page doesn’t show any statistics, and that’s probably because it isn’t fully functional yet. Currently, there’s no solid information about when Google will get the feature up and running or when the company will roll it out to the public. However, Mishaal Rahman says that it might happen with Android 15. So, we’ll have to wait for at least one year before we can check the battery health in Android.

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How to check battery health on your Android phone

You might notice that your phone’s battery isn’t as robust as it was when you purchased it. Frequently seeing the low battery indicator can get annoying, especially if you feel like you fully charged your phone a few hours ago. Whether you use a high-end or budget phone, the battery degrades over time.



You can check the battery’s health by reviewing its details in the settings app or installing third-party apps that offer detailed reports. This guide will walk you through several methods to check your Android phone or tablet’s battery health.


Why you should monitor your Android phone’s battery health

Two phones with battery and lightning bolt symbol on a blue green background.

Source: Pixabay

Battery health is an important indicator. It tells you the rate at which a battery is degrading. It provides information about the battery capacity, temperature, and charging cycles. Most Android phones show basic stats like battery usage by various apps and battery drain details. If you have a Samsung phone, you can get more information about the battery with the Samsung Members app. Use a third-party app like AccuBattery, Battery Guru, or CPU-Z for other phones.

Check battery usage from the Settings app

You can view your phone’s battery usage from the settings app. Most phones show which apps consume the most power, while some also display your battery’s temperature.

  1. Open the Settings app on your phone.
  2. Select Battery. Or, search for battery from the search bar.
  3. Select Battery usage.
  4. This displays the battery usage since the last full charge. It also shows which apps have been draining your phone’s battery.
  5. To view more details, tap the three-dot menu in the upper-right corner.
  6. Select Show full device usage.
  7. Select any app from the menu. You’ll see options like Unrestricted, Optimized, and Restricted to manage battery usage.

Check your battery health from the Phone

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Dave Burke explains Android 14’s big battery and performance improvements

Summary

  • Android 14 brings significant performance gains, with 30% less cold starts and a reduction in background activity by 50%.
  • Major improvements include changes in the system’s handling of RAM and processor workloads, resulting in noticeable improvements for users.
  • Android 14 also includes optimizations in ART (Android Runtime), reducing storage usage by 9% and freeing up 50MB to 100MB of data on optimized apps.


We’ve talked about it before, but Android 14 really seems to make a difference when it comes to performance. With the advent of Feature Drops, major OS version bumps aren’t as packed to the brim with user-facing changes as they once were. But Android 14 has several major improvements that users will surely notice even if they’re not visual upgrades or new functionality: Google has changed the way the system handles RAM and processor workloads, and the end result should be significant performance gains.

Dave Burke, Google’s Vice President of Engineering overseeing Android development, shared some insight into many of these changes in an interview on the company’s podcast, The Android Show (via 9to5Google). “We’ve done a ton of work to reduce CPU activity of background apps and the result is that there’s 30% less cold starts now on Android 14,” said Burke. “Cold starts are when you have to read the code pages off the flash and read them into memory before you execute them, right, and so a 30% reduction is pretty dramatic, and you feel that as a user.”

Google had mentioned some of this work as far back as the first developer preview build of Android 14 in February 2023. The company explained that the new version would be limiting broadcasts, which are the system’s way of communicating to apps when a critical change occurs, such as the phone’s battery level

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The best Android apps to check Android battery health

AccuBattery Battery Health App

Robert Triggs / Android Authority

Batteries don’t last forever; that’s just an unfortunate fact of smartphone life. As controversial as the iPhone 14’s seemingly limited long-term battery health may be, at least Apple provides an easy method to track how your power cell is holding up. It’s as simple as checking your regular battery settings. So while your iPhone may eventually only last a few hours on a single charge, at least you’ll be well prepared to book that battery replacement.

Android, by comparison, is a black box. Everything ticks along fine until your phone starts restarting, and hopefully, you piece together that the battery is kaput before sending the phone away for diagnostics. A simple battery replacement isn’t all that expensive, especially compared to a new phone. But many will end up discarding an otherwise perfectly working handset because it’s not clear what the cause of the problem really is or they need an immediate fix.

A heads-up would be nice, to say the least. Especially as many phones in the flagship and mid-tiers receive long-term updates that, in theory, will keep them ticking along for four or five years. Increasingly, the battery is the weakest link when running your phone for many years and consumers now need a way to keep on top of this potentially key repair.

Battery health monitoring is essential for phones built to last four or five years.

We reached out to Google to ask why no such feature is built into Android and whether there are plans to adopt an iPhone-esque percentage of initial capacity metric. Unfortunately, we received no response. As it stands, Android simply doesn’t include specific tools for tracking battery health baked into the operating system, leaving users at the whims of third-party applications.

All hope is not lost, though.

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How to see which apps are draining your phone’s battery the most

When comparing battery life, the best budget phones on Android can’t hold a charge like the newest ones on the market. With third-party apps sapping away at your device’s battery life, you need a way to slow down and monitor your battery’s consumption in the background. To combat this battery drain, we put together this guide showing you how to find the mobile apps that are draining your battery.


How to check for battery-draining apps on Android

Most phones have graphical data or lists that display every app that’s used your battery within a specific period. Below, we show some examples of how to find these graphs and data.

How to find your battery usage on Samsung

Navigating the battery settings from Battery and device care shows a list of Android apps and their associated battery-use percentage (since the last full charge) within a period. In this example, we use a Samsung Galaxy S23 operating Android 13. You can use these steps with any Samsung device. ​​​​​

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Tap Battery and device care.
  3. Tap Battery.
  4. Select the View details button.
  5. Tap the list of apps below the Battery usage graph.

You can view a graph depicting apps used since the last full charge or seven days. Tapping Last seven days displays the battery consumption data from 12 am to 12 pm for each day in the seven-day period. The pastel pink in the graph shows when the device was charging, and the salmon pink shows when apps used the battery.

Enlarged battery usage graph on a Samsung Galaxy S23 displayed in landscape mode

A plateau in the graph shows consistent battery usage. If you see an unusual dip, it might signal that a recent app’s update or installation might be behaving abnormally on your phone, but in most cases, it’s tied to activity.

The Battery usage graph does not

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Google bans Android apps that quietly kill your phone’s battery life, McAfee reveals

A cautionary alert has been issued to Android users, advising them to review their devices and remove a set of questionable applications. These apps have the potential to drain battery life and consume mobile data even when the screen is off. The discovery was brought to light by McAfee’s security team, who identified 43 apps capable of displaying advertisements while the device is idle.

This behavior is in direct violation of Google’s regulations and contradicts the company’s Google Play Developer policy. Despite these restrictions, some developers attempted to exploit this practice to generate ad clicks without user consent.

Although many of these apps have been removed from the Play Store by Google, around 2.5 million users had already installed them before their removal, as per the cited source. Some of the apps identified by McAfee are TV/DMB Player, Music Downloader, News, and Calendar applications. To avoid easy detection, these ads remain dormant for a few weeks after the initial app installation, making it more challenging to recognize the scam.

McAfee is urging users to exercise caution while downloading new apps onto their phones. They emphasize the importance of reviewing the permissions requested by the software before proceeding with the installation. Additionally, users are advised to monitor their device’s performance after installing new software; a sudden drop in battery life might indicate malicious activity.

How to stay safe?

If you have been witnessing any battery drain issues, then there are chances that you might be affected by this. But, do keep in mind that the reason for your phone’s bad battery life could also be because your device might be old or the battery unit is damaged for some reason. Either ways, users are advised to be mindful of the permissions that they give to the unknown apps that they install

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