So let’s go over what exactly Android Adaptive battery is, how to enable it, and what it does.
What is Android Adaptive Battery?
On Android, there are a lot of apps that run in the background, compared to iOS where many are not running. That’s one way that iOS is able to offer such better battery life with smaller battery sizes. A lot of apps on Android are constantly pulling data like your contacts, location data and other things. Which does take a toll on the battery life. Obviously, pulling your contacts is going to use a lot less power than pulling your location data. And without anything that regulates and coordinates power consumption, you’d notice a huge drain on your battery. That’s where Adaptive Battery comes into play. It does a few things to help make that battery last longer, without affecting how you use your phone. Those things include:
Limiting background activityLearning how you use the phone; andReducing performance
Now let’s go over each of these and what they actually do.
Limiting background activity
The biggest way that Adaptive Battery works to conserve your battery life is, by restricting how apps are able to work in the background. Some apps will obviously consume a lot more power than others. And with Adaptive Battery turned on, and app is running to much, you’ll get a notification which includes an option to put it to sleep. Now, as you use your phone more and more, Adaptive Battery will learn what apps are taking up the most background usage and limit some of those function. This won’t really affect the performance of your phone, but it will make your battery last even longer while the phone is idle. You might also notice that your phone ends up doing a lot more once you pick it up again, with more notifications coming in.
Learning how you use the phone
Perhaps not the easiest thing for the Adaptive Battery to do is, learn how you use your phone. And adapt the battery to that. After about a week of having Adaptive Battery enabled, you will notice that your phone lasts longer. That’s because it has learned what apps you use the most, how long you are using them, and how quickly your battery drains when not optimized. So the longer you use your phone, the better this will work for you. If you happen to notice that your phone is getting better battery life a week or two down the road, that is likely why.
Reducing performance
The final way that Adaptive Battery works is pretty subtle actually. A lot of our phones have processors that can run at up to 2GHz, which is pretty fast, even for a lot of phone tasks. So Adaptive Battery can reduce that performance when it’s not needed. For instance, when you’re not using your phone and it’s just sitting polling for notifications, it doesn’t need to run at full speed. It can instead run at a much slower speed, conserving your battery. Another example is if you’re just browsing Twitter. You don’t need 2GHz to browse Twitter, but when you’re playing a game you might. So the phone can slow down for Twitter, and speed up for something like Genshin Impact.
How to turn on Adaptive Battery
Adaptive Battery is unfortunately, not available on every phone. But we do know that it is available on the Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy smartphones. So here’s how you can turn it on for each phone. With the Google Pixel, head over to Settings. Then find Battery and tap on that. From there, tap on “Adaptive Preferences”, and then tap on the toggle for Adaptive Battery.
For Samsung, it’s pretty similar. Start by heading into settings and taping on “Battery and device care”. From there, tap on the battery. Next, scroll down and tap on “more battery settings”. Finally, tap on the toggle next to Adaptive Battery. Adaptive battery should be on by default, but sometimes it does get turned off. So still good to know how to enable it.
How to manage battery usage for each app
Google also allows you to control the battery usage for each app on your phone as well. Which is really nice to have. As some apps, you may not want to have optimized or Unrestricted. Like Life360 for example, that’s an app you won’t want to be optimized because it won’t be able to grab your location – which is really the only reason why it exists. So to do this, head into the App settings for the particular app you want to change the battery usage for. Then scroll down to “App battery usage” and tap on that. On this screen, it’ll show you how much battery it has used in the current cycle. Below that, you’ll still see the same options for opening the app, disabling it and doing a force stop. But what we really want is below that.
You’ll see three options here:
Unrestricted: Allow battery usage in background without restrictions. May use more battery.Optimized: Optimize based on your usage. Recommended for most apps.Restricted: Restrict battery usage while in background. App may not work as expected. Notifications may be delayed.
By default, apps will use the Optimized setting here. For the most part, you won’t really want or need to change these settings, but it’s good to see that Google does offer this as an option. An app like Facebook could benefit from Restricted, unless you really need those notifications to come in as soon as they happen. As we all know, Facebook does use a good amount of battery already.
What is Adaptive Charging
Adaptive Charging is kind of similar to the Adaptive Battery feature, but opposite at the same time. Basically, your phone will learn when you charge your phone and make sure it gets to 100% right around the time you’d normally unplug. So for example, if you normally charge overnight when you’re going to bed and you unplug around 7AM everyday, your phone will slowly charge to 80% and then stay there until around an hour or two before you normally unplug it. Then it will fully charge to 100%. This is so that the phone doesn’t overcharge, and by charging slower it also will allow the battery to last a lot longer.
Should you use Adaptive Battery and Adaptive Charging?
Yes you should, especially if you are planning to keep your phone for a few years. Not only do both of these features work really well to keep your phone running all day without needing to charge, but it also helps the battery’s longevity. Adaptive Battery is something you’ll see a bit more than adaptive charging. As Adaptive Battery is going to bring you benefits during the day when you’re at work and such. While Adaptive Charging mostly works overnight when you’re asleep and the phone is charging.
