The Battery Health feature on every iPhone displays the current condition of the battery at any given time. You can use this feature in multiple situations, including when you buy/sell your iPhone or want to replace the battery after a few years. Android devices, however, do not have this handy feature. With Android 14, Google may be baking this Battery Health feature into the Android OS.
As part of the developer preview, Android 14 was announced in February. Google announced Android 14’s first beta a month before Google IO 2023 a couple of months later. During the Google IO 2023 conference on May 10, the company released Android 14 Beta 2. According to Mishaal Rahman, a reputed Android researcher, Android 14 may incorporate an iOS feature that Android fans will love.
Battery Health feature on Android 14:
Mishaal Rahman reported on Twitter that Google added some new BatteryManager APIs with Android 14. The manufacturer, date of first use, charge policy, and state of health APIs are public APIs, while the rest are system APIs. According to Mishaal, anyone who holds the BATTERY_STATS permission can access the new system APIs. This feature is only available on Pixel devices running Android 14 Beta 2.
These new BatteryManager APIs have already been used by a developer named Narek to develop a quick proof-of-concept battery health app. GitLab now offers an open-source app for download. It is called Batt. By using the new APIs, the app can retrieve battery health, charge cycles, and charging status. The app however only reports what the APIs return, which can be either tracked by the charging IC or supported by the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer). As a result, we don’t know how accurate these stats are.
All users will be able to access this feature through the Settings app in the future. With the help of new APIs, other manufacturers can also pull this data. Samsung, OnePlus, Realme, Xiaomi, and others will bring this feature to Android users later this year with the Android 14 update. Users will no longer need to install any other apps just to check the battery’s health once Google integrates this feature into the Android OS.
