It’s not just Google Pixel owners who are getting fresh battery health tools, Samsung is also planning to add a new feature that will protect the battery in the upcoming Galaxy S24 and current Galaxy phones.
Spotted by Tipster Tarun Vats on Twitter/X, a new “battery protection” feature will add three new options to extend the life of the phone’s power pack. The options boil down to “basic protection” that stops charging at 100% and won’t resume until it drops to 95%, rather than continually topping up to stay at 100%.
Another is an adaptive charging mode, which slows down charging to 100% until you wake up. It learns your routine to do this and provides “moderate protection” according to the description in the feature menu.
The final option, “maximum protection”, stops charging completely at 80% and won’t resume until the phone drops below that. If that sounds familiar, this is a feature that Apple introduced exclusively to the iPhone 15, alongside other battery health information. Samsung’s level of battery protection is tiered because charging and draining your phone’s battery from naught to 100% (known as a cycle) degrades it faster than topping it up.
A leak earlier this month pointed to the new Samsung feature being exclusive to One UI 6.1, which is expected to release with the Galaxy S24 next month. But according to Tarun Vats, it’s now possible to activate it in One UI 6 by downloading an an app called Activity Launcher and enabling it by searching for “batterypro.” However, Tarun says that the feature doesn’t work properly yet, so it may be that the setting is reserved for the next One UI update.
The new power saving wave
In the absence of easily removable smartphone batteries—a brief Android trend back in 2016—companies are trying to make your device’s power pack last longer. Google has a new suite of battery health features that display the cycle count, manufacture date and how much charge the battery is capable of currently holding. Apple has a similar loadout of features for its iPhone, alongside some battery protection tools.
Google has made it easier to diagnose and repair its Pixel 8, alongside promising to supply parts (including batteries) for seven years. Considering that Apple, Google and Samsung have introduced a range of similar new battery health and protection features in the same year, I wonder if we’ll see Samsung offering extending software—and replacement parts—support for the upcoming Galaxy S24.
Samsung won’t want to be the company offering the least amount of support. So will it match Google’s offer of seven years of Android and security patches? Or something closer to Apple’s (roughly) six year promise? We’ll know more in a few weeks when the S24 launches.
