It can be hard to know when a phone is on its deathbed or when an app is just draining the battery. According to a recent Android Developers Blog, Google is going to help users get to the bottom of things.
The company recently announced the launch of a new metric for app developers that tracks battery usage. If a developer consistently violates Google’s battery usage guidelines, a warning will pop up in the Play Store to alert end users.
This metric will take a special look at the so-called wake lock, which occurs when a smartphone is prevented from entering sleep mode by battery-hungry apps that want to run background processes when the screen is off. Google says wake locks are a "Major contributor to battery drain" And have developed limits on what is considered acceptable for apps running in the background.
this threshold "A user considers a session excessive if it has more than two cumulative hours of non-waived wake locks in a 24-hour period." There is a discount if a background procedure is offered "clear user benefits" Examples of audio playback and user-initiated data transfer are provided.
If a developer does not fix the underlying wake lock issue, they are given a visible warning. play store label says so "This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity." This will likely turn off potential downloaders. I definitely won’t be getting even one of those apps on my phone.
Google will go a step further in some cases, making offending apps ineligible for certain search sections of the Play Store. These rules will go into effect on March 1, so we only have a few more months to experience how quickly an Android phone can go from full to full battery.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/google-is-clamping-down-on-android-apps-that-cause-excessive-battery-drain-194008031.html?src=rss.