Google declares war on excessively energy-consuming Android apps

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Google wants to fix “one of the biggest frustrations for Android users”: The manufacturer wants to help developers optimize the wake-up behavior of apps and thus put an end to excessively energy-guzzling applications.

If the smartphone battery has mysteriously lost a huge amount of capacity overnight or the device has given up the ghost earlier than usual, the culprit could be an app that is excessively active in the background. To prevent this, Google has announced new developer tools to help identify and improve the resource consumption of applications.

New metric to help app developers detect “excessive wake locks”

The first step is a metric aimed at identifying one of the most common causes of rapid battery drain: Android developers can now track so-called “excessive wake locks” via the Android Vitals dashboard in the Play console.

Wake locks are system-level functions that keep the smartphone “awake”, so to speak, even when it should be idle. These “wake locks” are used by some apps for perfectly legitimate reasons – for playing music or podcasts or for location tracking, for example. However, the wake lock function can also be used improperly and have a massive impact on battery life.

According to Google, the beta version of the metric will now report the excessive use of partial wake locks if all wake locks combined have been active for more than three hours in a 24-hour period. The current version for recording excessive wake lock metrics only measures the time when the function is kept in the background and no foreground service is available.

For better apps: Google works with major manufacturers

Google is working with smartphone manufacturers such as Samsung to improve battery life. The aim is to establish a “standardized definition” of what good performance on Android devices looks like. The aim of the initiative is to help developers write more efficient apps that work not only on individual devices, but across the entire Android ecosystem.

This is the beginning of a multi-year plan to give developers more insight into the performance of their apps “in the real world”. Further metrics focusing on app performance and battery life will be introduced in the future. Google is also considering changes to the Play Store to highlight optimized apps for users.

Google has long been working on better battery life and battery health for Android

Google has been working for some time on improving battery life and battery health, which should extend the life of the built-in batteries. With Android 15, for example, the manufacturer has significantly improved the Doze mode introduced with Android 6.0 Marshmallow to consume less energy in standby mode – The manufacturer claims a gain of up to three hours.

Most recently, Google introduced “battery health optimization” with the Pixel 9a to increase battery life. To achieve this, the maximum voltage of the battery is reduced over time.

(olb)