Android 16’s latest beta adds an iPhone-like Battery Health tool

Google has started the rollout of Android 16’s third beta build. It’s not a massive aesthetic makeover, but there are a few features that users will appreciate. Among them is the addition of a health check system for the phone’s battery.

The new feature, called Battery Health, can be accessed by opening the Battery dashboard in the Settings app. There isn’t a heap of functional stuff here, aside from an information deck that essentially tells you about the electrochemical status of your phone’s battery.

Why this is important?

A typical lithium-ion battery fitted inside smartphones undergoes repeated charge-discharge cycles, almost on a daily basis. Over time, chemical degradation happens, which affects how long the battery can retain charge. Technically speaking, rechargeable batteries are consumables and they have a limited lifespan.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

A lot of factors are involved here, such as impedance and battery voltage, both of which are affected by the chemical age of a battery. Based on the battery’s health, smartphones perform certain optimizations to manage the device workload, prevent shutdowns, and manage scenarios such as lags.

However, an average Android smartphone has no way of telling users whether their battery is not in optimal shape. With the arrival of the Android 16 Beta 3 update, the Battery Health dashboard will do just that in the form of a percentage figure, somewhat like the iPhones.

“This is an estimated percentage of charge the battery can currently hold compared to a new standard battery,” explains Google. In general, a battery health metric of over 80% is considered optimal for a phone to work fine without any noticeable charge efficiency or performance woes.

If it dips below that, users can reach out to the smartphone brand’s support channel and secure a replacement depending on the warranty coverage status.

It does more

Of course, it’s helpful that you can keep an eye on the battery health of your phone, especially in the long run. If your phone is giving you performance issues, you can quickly check if the aging battery is to blame, depending on the battery health percentage.

However, Google’s implementation on Android phones will offer a handful of suggestions on how users can get the best out of their phone’s battery while keeping it in good shape. To that end, the Battery Health dashboard will also include charging optimization controls.

One of those features is adaptive charging, which slows the pace of battery top-up when the phone is plugged in overnight, and only reaches the full capacity in a burst mode right before you wake up. Users can also choose to limit the battery charging to 80% of its peak capacity.

Moreover, the battery health dashboard will also offer quick access to guides and help articles on how users can strike the best balance between battery health and device performance.

Some of those steps include reducing the background activity burden from features such as Now Playing song identification, enabling adaptive brightness, and restricting app background activity.