Android 14 review: There’s always next year

pnutzh4x0r@lemmy.ndlug.org to Android@lemdro.id – 87 points –
Android 14 review: There’s always next year
arstechnica.com

Android 14 offers a lightly customizable lock screen and not much else.

25

You are viewing a single comment

Having tested Android 14 a while, there have been some nice battery life improvements. I'd consider that worthwhile.

Indeed.

After I updated my Pixel 6A, I noticed it comfortably lasts 1,5 - 2 days with light use (music streaming + Bluetooth, youtube, comic book reading, occasional maps navigation etc).

Before the update it lasted about 1-1,5 days with the same amount of use.

I don't have any screenshots to verify this (from accubattery or sth similar), so take this as anecdotal.

It wouldn't shock me. A lot of improvements to 14 are reeling in idle usage. In fact, that's a big focus on the last 3 or 4 Android versions, and something Android is doing to catch up to iOS.

It seems better for battery life to do batching and budgeting of background activities as much as possible, instead of continuous, unregulated usage.

I think the one thing I miss is that Android used to have idle background battery usage estimates, so that you knew which apps were killing your battery in the background. It's not quite as easy to figure that out anymore, but maybe something new will come along to help out with that.

I think the one thing I miss is that Android used to have idle background battery usage estimates, so that you knew which apps were killing your battery in the background. It's not quite as easy to figure that out anymore, but maybe something new will come along to help out with that.

I always use Franco Kernel Manager for this, along with Better Battery Stats to detect warlocks, in case there are any.

My device is rooted, but as far as I know root is not required to do this.

You'd need to keep an eye for a longer time to have a better metric that is for sure but usually a new OS update implies background stuff going all the time to make the system behave better... So if even with that downside you are perceiving an improvement that seems like good news!