The batteries on our smartphones are usually the first to go. The more we use them, the more they lose their ability to hold a charge. Ultimately, this leads us to using phones with shorter battery lives than when we first got them. But Google wants to address this with a new “Battery health assistance” feature that is launching with the Pixel 9a.
Pixel 9a battery health assistance
The folks at 9to5Google discovered this when they noticed the footnote on the Pixel 9a’s Google Store listing. It mentions, “Pixel software will manage battery performance to help maintain battery health as your battery ages.” Google expands on this further in a support document.
According to Google’s support page, “This software will adjust the battery’s maximum voltage in stages that start at 200 charge cycles and continue gradually until 1000 charge cycles to help stabilize battery performance and aging.”
“You may notice small decreases in your battery’s runtime as your battery ages. Battery health assistance will also tune the phone’s charging speed based on adjusted capacity. You may notice a slight change in battery charging performance.”
The feature will be available on the Pixel 9a first, but Google tells 9to5Google that it will eventually roll out to “a selection of Pixel devices” later this year. However, the company stopped short of naming which models will get the new feature.
Similar to Apple
This feature also sounds similar to the battery management feature Apple introduced to its iPhones. As our batteries age, it can have an effect on performance. What Apple did was throttle performance when the battery capacity dipped below 80%. Apparently, this is what the company has always been doing. However, the lack of transparency led many to believe Apple was slowing down their phones on purpose.
Apple later introduced more transparent settings and gave users the option of disabling throttling if they wanted to.
The Google Pixel 9a is expected to be released on the 10th of April and might be worth checking out if you’re looking for a somewhat affordable Pixel handset.
