Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google says that in Android 15 they have accelerated the speed at which phones enter sleep mode by 50%.
- The result is that some devices have up to 3 hours longer standby performance on the latest operating system.
- This improvement will be available for all devices that receive the Android 15 update.
Every major Android update brings with it a few high-level, user-focused features that get a lot of marketing and attention, but they also make a lot of deep, under-the-hood changes that can be just as important from a user experience perspective . Take the upcoming Android 15 update as an example. At the Google I/O 2024 developer conference this week, the second beta of Android 15 was announced with headline-grabbing features like Private Space, App Pairs, improved theft detection services, and more. But during I/O, Google also quietly shared some interesting stats about Android 15, like that it extends standby battery life by up to three hours on some devices.
At Google I/O, I asked Dave Burke, VP of Engineering for the Android platform, and Sameet Samat, president of the Android ecosystem, to explain how Google is making the battery life improvements announced as part of the latest version of Wear OS has reached . In case you missed the announcement, Google essentially said that running marathons on smartwatches running Wear OS 5 will use up to 20% less power than on Wear OS 4. Samat said that this specific improvement was achieved through a series of optimizations, with For example, this reduces the time it takes for the device’s main application processor (AP) to go back to sleep after waking up to write some health data. (For the full interview with Dave Burke and Sameet Samat, see episode 44 of Android loyal Podcast, which I co-host).
Samat went on to talk about how Wear OS 5 now shifts even more background tasks to when your watch is charging, rather than when you’re wearing it on your wrist. Deciding when is best to run background tasks is a big challenge not just for Wear OS but for Android. Android attempts to intelligently delay and run as many background tasks as possible during selected “maintenance windows” while the device is in a state where it has been idle for a period of time and its screen is turned off. This state – called Doze Mode – has been a core feature of Android’s power management system since Android 6.0 and is seeing further improvements in Android 15, according to Dave Burke.
Burke followed up on Samat’s answer and put forward some general power saving improvements that will be available for all Android devices in the future. Specifically, he says that with Android 15, the company has reduced sleep time by 50%. This means devices running Android 15 enter sleep mode 50% faster than those running Android 14. The result is an improvement in standby battery life, up to three hours on some devices tested by Google.
“For Android 15, we reduced the time to sleep (snoozing means going into a state of rest) by 50%. So we doze off 50% faster and the result is that some of the devices we tested are in standby mode up to 3 hours longer. And that’s kind of a general improvement in 15 that applies to all devices.” Dave Burke, VP of Engineering for the Android platform.
Because this is a change to a core Android feature, this improvement will be rolled out to all devices that receive an update to Android 15. This also includes Wear OS, although it’s worth noting that the upcoming update to the Wear OS 5 platform is based on Android 14. not Android 15. Still, this is an improvement to look forward to in next year’s Wear OS 6 update, assuming Google continues its annual cycle of releasing updates to the Wear OS platform. While this specific improvement won’t be available in this year’s Wear OS 5 release, the other battery-related improvement we mentioned, as well as new features like a grid-based app launcher and privacy dashboard, won’t be available.