Android

Android looks to once again be preparing support for ‘Battery health’ in Settings

Ben Schoon | Dec 21 2023 - 10:50 am PT

The longevity of our smartphones has become, more and more, a crucial talking point. As such, Android has started putting more emphasis on features that help manage your phone over time, and that will soon, apparently, include a section for battery health in Settings.

In Android 14’s first maintenance release, QPR1, Google introduced a few new tricks to the Settings menu. That includes new troubleshooting sections and diagnostics on Pixel phones, as well as a new “Battery information” section. This counts battery cycles on your Android phone to show how many times the battery has been discharged and charged. It was similar to the functionality Apple added to iPhones, but unlike on iOS, Android isn’t yet showing battery health.

Battery health refers to the remaining capacity of your battery as it ages. As batteries are used, their capacity slightly shrinks, and while a percentage isn’t necessarily going to show that information perfectly, it’s a great way to easily understand how your battery is holding up.

Now, it seems Google is working to bring battery health to Android’s Settings.

As noted by Android Authority, a new update to Settings Services, an app that controls a handful of functions on Pixel phones (and a handful of other devices) and is updated independent of Android, prepares support for battery health. A new page that would appear in the Settings app would show the “estimated percentage of charge the battery can currently hold compared to when it was new,” as strings reveal. The page was manually enabled but is not yet live.

Strings further reveal an option to recalibrate the results, mentioning that the “process may take a few weeks.” A handful of icons were also found, but again, nothing is live as of today. Apparently, the page may also be able to detect if you’re using an original or replacement battery.

Notably, though, this isn’t the first time Google has been looking at this.

In October 2022, we uncovered work in Android 13 that showed a new section in the Settings menu on Pixel phones, which could show battery health. That section, which was much more complete compared to this new effort, similarly offered tips to extend battery health by optimizing settings and using the correct charging hardware. But that feature never went live. Presumably, Google is shifting efforts to this new option, which would potentially show up on more devices than just Pixels.