Published on November 19, 2021, 11:48
Android's battery settings continue to evolve.Screenshot: Android
Whether it's turning down the screen brightness, switching to airplane mode, or packing a portable charger, keeping a smartphone battery alive for as long as possible between charges is a challenge we face. faced since smartphones have existed. With the many improvements made to smartphones over the years, a day (or slightly more) of battery life has remained the norm.
Google applied some clever algorithms to the problem in the form of an adaptive battery feature, which was introduced in Android 9 in 2018 and continues to be adjusted and refined today. Lately it has come back into the news as a pretty vital feature if you want your Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro to last longer.
But what exactly is this adaptive battery feature? Is it something you should always keep on? And how much better can your battery life be if it's turned on? Here we are going to tell you everything you need to know about this key Android feature.
What is Adaptive Battery?
Adaptive Battery attempts to relieve your smartphone battery by identifying which apps are more important to you than others. See the article: Akasa SSD case: giving new life to your hard drives. Lesser-used apps that don't really need to be constantly running in the background are pushed out of device memory when you're done using them, while apps you use more frequently are kept in memory for faster and easier access.
According to Google, this means that apps only use precious battery capacity when they really need it. A complex neural network works behind the scenes trying to figure out which apps you might need in the next few hours and which ones you probably won't want to open until later in the day (or even later in the week or month).
From a more technical perspective, it uses DeepMind technology to classify apps into categories, which then determines how much system resources they are allowed to use. Apps you rarely use will continue to run as normal, but you may notice that they are slightly slower the first time you return to them, as Android has to reload all app items into memory. Notifications from these apps may also be delayed.
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The extra time between charges depends on the phone you're using and what you're doing with it. When the feature launched, Google executives were talking about a 5% reduction in CPU load. More recently, users have reported a significant improvement in battery life once Adaptive Battery has had a chance to work its magic.
How Adaptive Battery works also depends on the current state of your phone: If your phone is plugged in and charging, for example, restrictions on what apps can do will be less severe. Charging is another aspect where Google has applied its machine learning know-how, although it doesn't directly affect battery life.
How to use Adaptive Battery
On Android 9 and above, adaptive battery should be enabled by default. To check, open Settings, then choose Battery and adaptive preferences. This may interest you: 52% discount on the Bosch MultiTalent 8 white during Black Friday. In Android 12, you'll see an Adaptive Battery toggle switch alongside the more recently added Adaptive Charging feature, if your handset supports it – at the moment the charging feature is a Pixel exclusive.
That's all there is to the Adaptive Battery settings: You can turn it on or off. There are no options to configure or settings to make, as everything is handled automatically by Android and its built-in algorithms. You can go back to the Battery menu and choose Battery Usage to see which apps are most demanding on battery usage, and a Battery Saver feature adds even more restrictions on background activity in all your apps.
It should be noted that the Adaptive Battery feature may take some time to figure out how you use your apps on a new device. It will probably take a week or two after you upgrade your phone or do a factory reset for the benefits of this feature to really be noticeable. In other words, don't rush to disable Adaptive Battery on a new phone if you don't think it's having an effect.
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As with many Android features, the battery options you see may vary depending on your phone manufacturer. In the most recent version of Samsung's One UI, for example, you can find the Adaptive Battery feature by going to Settings and choosing Battery & Device Care, then Battery, then Other Battery Settings.