Android 14: Brings Battery Health to phones and tablets

One useful iOS feature that Android has been missing is Battery Health, an extremely handy app that shows the battery's maximum capacity over time and with use.

However, it seems this… gap will not last long, as all signs suggest that Android 14 will offer battery health monitoring on all devices when its final version is released.

Battery Health: What information has leaked about Android 14

Mishaal Rahman, former EIC of XDA-Developers, revealed that Google has added some new BatteryManager APIs to the Android 14 beta. Two of these 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 battery health status.

See MishaalRahman's tweet about Android 14

I bought a used Pixel 7 Pro recently and thought it was a shame that Google's battery health feature hasn't been released.

It'd be nice to see how many charge cycles it's had or the estimated % of its original capacity. Fortunately, Google's made it possible in Android 14! 🧵 pic.twitter.com/KXGtLwhJtU

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) June 1, 2023

Rahman says that any app with the BATTERY_STATS permission can call these system APIs, but they are only available on Pixel devices running Android 14 Beta 2 or later.

Developer Narek has created an app called Batt that uses these new APIs to report on a smartphone's battery health and charge cycles.

However, the data provided by this app is not always 100% accurate.

If Google does add this app to the final version of Android 14, you will not need to rely on apps such as Batt to check your device's battery health.