Battery life has always been a focus of modern smartphone users, no matter how much battery is installed in the phone, rogue applications running in the background will drain its power in a short period of time. Google aims to address this issue with a new system notification that informs users that apps are draining the battery in the background.
After the release of Android 13 Developer Preview 2, Google updated a document saying that Android 13 will introduce a notification that will alert users whenever an app consumes too much power within a 24-hour period. Google notes that the warning won’t show when an app’s foreground service is draining a lot of battery, only if it continues to consume a high battery in the background thereafter.
After the first warning notification is issued, the warning will not be displayed again until at least 24 hours have passed. Android 13 will measure battery impact by considering foreground services, work tasks, app caches, broadcast receivers, and background receivers. There are certain exemptions for this function. The exemptions are as follows:
- System apps and system-bound apps
- Companion device app
- An application running on the device in demo mode
- Device owner app
- Profile Owner App
- persistent application
- VPN application
- Applications with the ROLE_DIALER role
- The user has explicitly specified in the system settings an application that provides “unrestricted” functionality
Additionally, if Android 13 detects that an app has been running in the foreground for at least 20 hours in a 24-hour period, it will display the following notification: “App has been running in the background for a long time.” Clicking on this notification will open the foreground service task manager for the user to take action. This notification will only be shown once for one app within 30 days.
Google has been making low-level adjustments to the Android system to make it more efficient for several years, including making huge changes to the way background services work in Android 12, all to ensure users’ Phones last longer.