HIGHLIGHTS

* Android 14 is now available for select phones as a part of the Beta program.
* The stable version of Android 14 is expected to roll out around August this year.
* Android 14 Beta 2 was announced at Google IO 2023 last month.

All iPhones come with a Battery Health feature that tells how good is the condition of the battery of that particular device at any point in time.
This feature comes in handy in multiple instances, such as when you are buying/selling your iPhone or even looking to replace the battery of the device after a few years.

However, this handy little feature is not present on Android devices. But things are about to change as Google might be prepping to bake this Battery Health feature to Android OS with Android 14.

Android 14 was announced in February earlier this year as a part of the developer preview. A couple of months later, Google announced the first beta version of Android 14, a month ahead of the Google IO 2023.

Soon, the company followed up with the Android 14 Beta 2 during the Google IO 2023 conference on May 10. Now, Mishaal Rahman, a reputed Android researcher, has revealed that Android 14 might bring one of the iOS features that will make Android fans happy.

WHILE the public release of Android 14 is a few months away, we have seen several features that could debut when the OS gets stable. In the latest update, reports claim that Google might borrow a page from Apple’s book and finally integrate highly requested battery health features on Android-powered smartphones with new Android.

It would come as a relief for the ones who always believe that their battery is not working at its best potential. But are confused about the question of getting it replaced or not.

Details on this feature were shared by Mishaal Rahman, a freelance journalist on Twitter who claims that checking battery capacity and charge cycles is “possible in Android 14.” These new system APIs are public and can be retrieved by an app that has the “BATTERY_STATS permission.”

“Taking a deeper look, though, and it seems like the new system APIs can be called by any app that holds the BATTERY_STATS permission. This is a signature|privileged|development permission; “development” permissions can be granted to non-system apps through the ‘pm grant’ command,” the Android researcher shared on the micro-blogging platform.

To cement the claim, Rahman shared a GitLab link to an open-source app that utilises these Android 14 APIs. In the screenshot shared by the journalist, it indeed seems true.

The Android device is visible with 92 per cent battery capacity left and has completed 552 charge cycles. However, the Twitter user does not vouch for the stats. As it just returns data fetched from APIs.

If Google integrates these stats into the native settings app, these apps won’t be necessary, he speculates.

Moreover, this will also ensure users trust the accuracy of these numbers. We can expect the feature to mark attendance in the future beta builds of Android 14. As for the public release, we can expect a full-scale rollout of the new Android in August 2023.

Android 14 Might Bring Battery Health Feature

In a Twitter thread, Mishaal Rahman said he discovered some new BatteryManager APIs that Google added with Android 14. Two APIs (charge cycle count and charging status) are public, while the rest (manufacturing date, date of first use, charging policy, state of health) is system APIs.

Further, Mishaal said that the new system APIs could be called by any app that holds the BATTERY_STATS permission. However, this is available on Pixel devices running on the latest Android 14 Beta 2.

A developer named Narek has already created a quick proof-of-concept battery health app using these new BatteryManager APIs. The app is open source and is now available for download from GitLab.

The app is called Batt. The screenshots reveal that with the new APIs, the app could pull the battery’s health, the number of charge cycles, and the charging status.

However, Rahman also further mentions that the app just reports what the APIs return, which depends on whether the stats are tracked by the charging IC and whether the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) supports this feature. So, there is no way to know how accurate these stats are yet.

Going forward, we can expect Google to bake this feature into the OS, which all users can access within the Settings app. It is also possible for other manufacturers apart from Google to pull this data with the help of new APIs.

We can expect more Android phones from brands like Samsung, OnePlus, Realme, Xiaomi, and more to bring out this feature for all Android users with the Android 14 update later this year.

Once Google bakes this feature into the Android OS, users can get rid of any other apps just to check the health status of the battery.

Having this feature on Android will give users one less thing to worry about, especially when the device is over 2 years old. Furthermore, with the battery health feature, users can easily know when to replace the battery, and also, in case of buying or selling a used phone, this feature will come in handy too.

FAQ’s on Android 14

1) Android 14 May Introduce Battery Health Feature For Users

Ans) The latest version of Google’s smartphone operating system, Android 14, may finally come with the feature to view the battery health of your devices.

In a series of tweets, Android researcher Mishal RahmanRahman stated that the new OS will come with a battery manager API, which will let users know information like cycle count, charging status, manufacturing date, battery health, and more. Currently, only Google Pixel smartphones running Android 14 beta or later have access to this information.

With the release of the API, developers are already making apps that allow users to monitor the battery health of their devices. Android developer @narektor has already created and launched the app Batt, which uses the API to provide battery health statistics.

Though, with the case of APIs, this data may not be entirely accurate. The app uses data provided by the API, which itself relies on data coming in from the trackers present in the hardware.

Battery health statistics have been a long-expected feature from users. Apple introduced the Battery Health feature in its smartphones with the release of iOS 11.3 in March 2018. This feature allowed iPhone users to monitor the health and performance of their device’s battery, including information about its maximum capacity and peak performance capability.

However, Android users don’t have access to similar data. With the release of the API, which is expected to drop with the full release of Android 14, users are hopeful that Google will drop its own native battery health feature using the current framework. Though with how development cycles work, Google is just as likely to drop the feature from the release of Android 14 and instead ship it with Android 15 instead.

Google first unveiled Android 14 in February 2023, revealing more features during the Google I/O 2023 event in May and dropping Android 14 Beta 2 at the same time. The software giant is looking for a full release of the mobile OS sometime around August or September.

2) How to Edit WhatsApp Messages on Android and iOS: Step by Step Guide

Ans) WhatsApp, on May 22, announced the global rollout of a much requested new feature. Through a blog post, WhatsApp, the Meta-owned instant messaging service announced that it has added the ability for users to edit WhatsApp messages at will. The feature is now rolling out to users globally. However, many users in India are yet to get the update that would enable the ‘edit’ feature on the platform.
Whichever side you’re on, the ability to edit WhatsApp messages after having sent out typographical errors can be a priceless addition that can simplify many confusions. On this note, here’s looking at how you can edit WhatsApp messages, even after you have already sent them.

How to Edit WhatsApp Messages

There is no complicated process entailed with editing messages on WhatsApp, and the process is fairly simple and streamlined. Here’s how it would work:

* Long press on a message that has already been sent, which needs to be edited.
* On the drop-down menu that opens, select or tap on ‘edit’
* This will open a floating text editor in front of you, where you can rectify a message that you have sent already
* Tap on ‘confirm’ to save the edited message
* An ‘edited’ tag will appear below your message, confirming that your changes have been saved

It is important to note that the ‘edit WhatsApp messages’ feature was, for the longest time, available in beta on WhatsApp for desktop but was only recently extended to mobile platforms. This means that both Android and iOS devices, as well as WhatsApp’s dedicated Mac and Windows app, and even its web browser version, will be able to offer the ‘edit’ button to users.

However, users will only be able to edit their messages on WhatsApp, on both personal and group chats, for a period of 15 minutes. While unlimited edits are allowed during this period, no messages sent before this time period can be edited.

In a statement, WhatsApp said, “Edited messages will display ‘edited’ alongside them, so those you’re messaging are aware of the correction without showing edit history. As with all personal messages, media and calls, your messages and the edits you make are protected by end-to-end encryption.”

Why Have ‘Edit’ Features Been Controversial in the Past?

* The main issue with letting users edit WhatsApp messages, something that Twitter has contended with for the longest time, lies with authenticity and veracity of content — and the risk of the latter being manipulated.
* While features such as adding an ‘edited’ tag on messages that have been tweaked after being sent is a solution, Twitter had, for the longest time, contended that allowing users to edit any statement that is publicly published may add room for misinformation and manipulation of content — which could prove to be harmful to socio-political safety.
* WhatsApp, to be sure, is one of the most widely used messaging applications globally — media reports have pegged it to have over 2.4 billion users globally, with over 480 million of them in India. The latter is also WhatsApp’s largest global market, which makes an ‘edit’ feature potentially of massive significance in the content manipulation narrative.

Also Read: Android 14: Features & Eligible Devices Revealed

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