As all of you probably know, battery health is an important thing to monitor to preserve the longevity of your smartphone. Different phone makers approach the issue differently. Now, Android Central reports that Google has quietly introduced a battery-health preserving feature to Pixel phones.
Google makes sure your Pixel’s battery is protected during extreme use cases
The new feature that the company introduced limits Pixel batteries to an 80% charge in some scenarios. It prevents the phone from fully charging in some extreme conditions, and only two of these conditions are listed on a Google support page:
- Continuous charge under high battery drain conditions, like for example gameplay.
- Continuous charge for four days or more.
When these two ‘extreme charging conditions’ are detected, the phone will not fully charge and will charge up to 80%, a feature that protects the battery’s health. This new functionality is available to Pixel 3 or higher. When this feature has been triggered, users will see an “Optimizing for battery health” message on the Always-on display on the phone.
This feature is similar to Battery Care on Sony Xperia phones, which learns usage patterns and limits the amount of time the battery is kept charging over 90%.
The difference here is this battery optimization strategy has a toggle to turn off, while Google’s doesn’t. However, if your phone no longer meets the two conditions, the battery optimization automatically turns off.
So, if you want to turn off the battery optimization on your Pixel, you need to, pretty much, unplug your device from the charger or remove it from its wireless charging stand. You can also restart your device or “wait about 10 minutes”, according to Google.
However, if these conditions are met again, the battery optimization will start limiting your charge again. This feature is different from Adaptive Charging, which uses your alarm to limit overnight charging. The iPhone’s “Optimized Battery charging” does a similar thing to Adaptive Charging, learning from your daily habits on when exactly to charge from 80% to 100%.
The new battery optimization feature is said to have appeared on Pixel phones around April or May.
