Android 14 could bring battery health feature to phones and tablets

iOS has a Battery Health feature that's missing as a native feature on Android to show the device battery's maximum remaining capacity. However, Android 14 could bring that to all Android devices when its final version is released.

Former XDA-Developers' EIC Mishaal Rahman has revealed that Google added some new BatteryManager APIs to Android 14 beta. Two of them are public APIs - used to provide information about cycle count and charging status - while the rest are system APIs that report the device's manufacturing date, date of first use, charging policy, and state of health.

Rahman reports that any app with the BATTERY_STATS permission can call these system APIs, but they are available only on Pixel devices running Android 14 Beta 2 or higher. Developer Narek developed an app called Batt that uses these new APIs to report the smartphone's battery health and charge cycles. You can download it from GitLab and try it on your device if it's running Android 14.

Device battery status reported by the Batt app

However, the accuracy of the data the app shares can't be vouched for since it reports what the APIs return and those stats depend on the information the charging IC tracks. It also depends on whether or not the HAL supports this feature.

Here's hoping Google will add a proper battery health feature to the stable Android 14 so you don't have to rely on apps like Batt to check your device's battery health status.

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