Insider Mishaal Rahman seems to have found a new operating system feature in the beta version of Android 14.
What to expect
It looks like Android 14 may come with built-infunction to check the battery condition, namely date of manufacture, date of first use, charging intensity, number of cycles and charging status. iOS has a similar Battery Health feature, and some Android smartphone manufacturers add it to their shells. This information can help you understand when to replace your old battery with a new one.
According to an insider, Google has added severalnew BatteryManager APIs in the Android 14 beta. Two of them are public APIs that are used to provide information about the number of cycles and charge status, and the rest are system APIs that report the device's manufacturing date, date of first usage, charging policy and health status.
I bought a used Pixel 7 Pro recently and thought it was a shame that Google's battery health feature hasn't been released.
It’d be nice to see how many charge cycles it’s had or the estimated % of its original capacity. Fortunately, Google's made it possible in Android 14! pic.twitter.com/KXGtLwhJtU
— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2023
To test this assumption, the developerNarek has created an app called Batt that uses these new APIs to report a smartphone's battery status and charging cycles. However, the accuracy of the data cannot be confirmed as it is based on API information.
Either way, we hope Google adds a proper battery health feature to the stable version of Android 14 so you don't have to use third-party apps.