• By Vikas Yadav
  • Sun, 04 Jun 2023 08:19 PM (IST)
  • Source:JND

WHILE the public release of Android 14 is a few months away, we have seen several features that could debut when the OS gets stable. In the latest update, reports claim that Google might borrow a page from Apple's book and finally integrate highly requested battery health features on Android-powered smartphones with new Android. It would come as a relief for the ones who always believe that their battery is not working at its best potential. But are confused about the question of getting it replaced or not.

Details on this feature were shared by Mishaal Rahman, a freelance journalist on Twitter who claims that checking battery capacity and charge cycles is "possible in Android 14." These new system APIs are public and can be retrieved by an app that has the "BATTERY_STATS permission."

Also Read: OnePlus 11, Oppo Find N2 Flip Among Phones To Get Android 14 Beta; Check List And How To Download

"Taking a deeper look, though, and it seems like the new system APIs can be called by any app that holds the BATTERY_STATS permission. This is a signature|privileged|development permission; "development" permissions can be granted to non-system apps through the 'pm grant' command," the Android researcher shared on the micro-blogging platform.

To cement the claim, Rahman shared a GitLab link to an open-source app that utilises these Android 14 APIs. In the screenshot shared by the journalist, it indeed seems true. The Android device is visible with 92 per cent battery capacity left and has completed 552 charge cycles. However, the Twitter user does not vouch for the stats. As it just returns data fetched from APIs.

If Google integrates these stats into the native settings app, these apps won't be necessary, he speculates. Moreover, this will also ensure users trust the accuracy of these numbers. We can expect the feature to mark attendance in the future beta builds of Android 14. As for the public release, we can expect a full-scale rollout of the new Android in August 2023.

Meanwhile, Apple introduced a similar feature in iPhone to monitor the battery health with iOS 14.5, according to The Indian Express. Since then, it has been used as a key metric to zero down on a decision on whether to replace a battery in an iPhone or not.