Pixel Buds showing remaining battery life in hours for some on Android 12

Abner Li | May 23 2021 - 12:44 pm PT

The last update to Pixel Buds with an accompanying changelog came in September with a fix for audio cutouts, while that was preceded by a feature drop the month before. One upcoming new capability for the Pixel Buds could be the ability to see remaining battery life in hours on Android 12.

Today, the Pixel Buds companion ‘app’ can show the battery life for each component as a percentage. This has been the case since launch.

At least one user is now seeing how many hours of battery life they have left. It appears below the battery percentage for the left and right buds, but not the case. In the screenshots below, we see how the estimate differs between components charged to 100%. This could either be reflective of battery health or people’s long-standing observations that charge drained differently between buds.

We have not been able to get this hours/minutes-based battery life estimate to appear on our device (stable or preview), with the person encountering it on Android 12 Beta 1. Meanwhile, their Pixel Buds are running firmware 553 released in February (with no changelog) and version 1.0.367372739 of the companion client. Google could be in the process of A/B testing this capability.

Android has long provided a similar time-based estimate for phones and tablets. For Pixel Buds, they provide a more actionable piece of information for owners than percentage. Most are presumably aware that the headphones have five hours of battery life per charge. This could possibly be an Android 12 feature for Bluetooth accessories, but some level of accessory-maker integration is likely required to get accurate, hardware-specific estimates.