Smart battery on Pixel

Hi Pixel People,

I’m Michelle, a Product Manager in the NYC office. I want to let you know about some changes we just rolled out that will make your battery life estimates more accurate on Pixel!

Previously, your phone would estimate your battery loss with simple assumptions. If you’ve used about 10% per hour over the past few hours, we would guess you will keep using 10% per hour. As you might expect, this wasn’t always very accurate.

To fix this, we built an on-device model that evaluates how you use your phone’s battery over time. Your phone looks at your battery usage on similar days and times, and uses that to predict your battery life in a personalized way.

This means that if you’re like me and love to binge-watch YouTube on your way home, your phone will include that extra battery drain from Corgi videos in your estimate! I hope you will find this feature as helpful as I have; I can now appreciate my favorite fluffy creatures and still know whether my phone will last through dinner with friends.

To see these predictions for yourself, visit Settings on your phone. Under the “Battery” section will be your personalized battery estimate, which tells you both what percent of battery you have left and how many hours your phone will last. Here’s what mine looked like when I unplugged my phone earlier today:

You can also click on Battery, and then click on the big battery icon, to see the estimate represented graphically over time, where you may notice certain periods of estimated high and low usage that should correspond to your typical behavior. Here’s what my graph looks like right now:

Let us know how you like these changes! Have you had moments where your estimate was particularly good (or bad)? We’re continually working on improving these estimates, and making the battery experience on Pixel great.

Finally, tell us if you have more ideas about how you would like your phone to inform you or warn you about battery. Now that we have these personalized estimates, we’re interested in exploring new ways of proactively helping you manage your battery to make it through the day.