In the report of android, users of the android 8.1 developer
preview now find a banner at the top of the typical battery screen that calls
out any app that’s significantly draining the battery. In two examples the
report gave, there’s a battery symbol with an exclamation point next to tile
and amaze, indicating their battery abuse. It makes sense for these apps to hog
the battery so much.
The new feature is a simple implementation of battery usage
that’ll certainly help users manage their apps more efficiently. It might even
push them to uninstall apps that regularly drain their phone’s juice
altogether. Why has it only been added now, though? Couldn’t a similar feature
have worked in, say, previous versions of Android? It’s hard to understand
Google sometimes. Bluetooth battery levels, as mentioned above, weren’t even
added to Android until Oreo.
That being said, this should be a neat little feature for Android
users once a stable version of 8.1 rolls out to everyone — if it makes it to
the final release, that is. There have been many third-party apps that detect
and crack down battery-abusive software, but a native one accessed directly
within Android Oreo would be much better. Hopefully it does get added to the
final version, as Google has been known to add features in developer previews
only to gut them before the stable release.
There’s room for improvement, though. The feature only lets users
turn off certain parts of the app that causes battery drain, but in the future
maybe Android could also elaborate why the app is causing such a huge strain on
the battery, or perhaps it can even show users other processes that contribute
to rapid battery depletion, such as having Bluetooth or mobile data on for long
periods.
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