The latest version of Google’s smartphone operating system, Android 14, may finally come with the feature to view the battery health of your devices.

In a series of tweets, Android researcher Mishal RahmanRahman stated that the new OS will come with a battery manager API, which will let users know information like cycle count, charging status, manufacturing date, battery health, and more. 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 making apps that allow users to monitor the battery health of their devices. Android developer @narektor has already created and launched the app Batt, which uses the API to provide battery health statistics. Though, with the case of APIs, this data may not be entirely accurate. The app uses data provided by the API, which itself relies on data coming in from the trackers present in the hardware.

Battery health statistics have been a long-expected feature from users. Apple introduced the Battery Health feature in its smartphones with the release of iOS 11.3 in March 2018. This feature allowed iPhone users to monitor the health and performance of their device’s battery, including information about its maximum capacity and peak performance capability.

However, Android users don’t have access to similar data. With the release of the API, which is expected to drop with the full release of Android 14, users are hopeful that Google will drop its own native battery health feature using the current framework. Though with how development cycles work, Google is just as likely to drop the feature from the release of Android 14 and instead ship it with Android 15 instead.

Google first unveiled Android 14 in February 2023, revealing more features during the Google I/O 2023 event in May and dropping Android 14 Beta 2 at the same time. The software giant is looking for a full release of the mobile OS sometime around August or September.

Source: Bureau