The latest version of Google’s smartphone operating system, Android 14, may finally come with a feature to view the battery health of your devices.
In a series of tweets, Android researcher Mishaal Rahman Rahman said that the new OS will come with a Battery Manager API, which will give users information like cycle count, charging status, creation date, battery health and other information. Currently, only Google Pixel smartphones running Android 14 beta or later have access to this information.
With the release of the API, developers are already building apps that allow users to monitor the battery health of their devices. Android developer @narektor has already built and launched the Bat app, which uses an API to provide battery health statistics. However, in the case of APIs, this data may not be completely accurate. The app uses data provided by the API, which itself relies on data coming from trackers in the hardware.
Using that knowledge, Developer @narektor Whipped up a quick proof-of-concept Battery Health app that makes use of these new Android 14 APIs. His app, Bat, is open source and available to download from GitLab: https://t.co/UunnFpmebq pic.twitter.com/oowJ4TMyIM— Mishaal Rahman (@Mishaal Rahman) June 1, 2023
Battery health statistics have been a long-awaited feature of users. Apple introduced the Battery Health feature to its smartphones in March 2018 with the release of iOS 11.3. The feature allowed iPhone users to monitor the health and performance of their device’s battery, including information on its maximum capacity and peak performance capability.
However, Android users do not have access to the same data. With the release of the API, which is expected to coincide with the full release of Android 14, users can expect Google to drop its native Battery Health feature using the current framework. However due to how the development cycle works, Google is likely to drop this feature from the release of Android 14 and ship it with Android 15 instead.
Google first unveiled Android 14 in February 2023, revealed more features during the Google I/O 2023 event in May, and dropped Android 14 Beta 2 at the same time. The software giant is looking for a full release of the mobile OS around August or September.