Summary
- Google aims to release Android 16 early, targeting Q2 2025.
- Android 16 Developer Preview 4 was recently released, and it also had a battery health bug.
- The bug was fixed with the latest Google Play Services update, but the accuracy is being questioned.
Android 15 made its official debut in October 2024, and to the surprise of many, Google released its first developer preview of Android 16 just a month later. Google has an ambitious plan to release the next version of Android much earlier than usual, setting a date for Android 16 to arrive sometime in Q2 2025.
Related
Google releases Android 16 Beta 4, hitting the final milestone before stable
A public build should land within the next two months
With that said, Google has done a pretty good job so far, with Android 16 Developer Preview 4 arriving just a day prior, ahead of the stable release that should arrive in the next couple of months. Of course, that doesn’t mean that releases are perfect, and there’s apparently a weird bug with the latest release that affects the Battery health page found in the OS.
A bug that’s come and gone
The folks at 9to5Google were the first to report that the Battery health page had disappeared with Android 16 Developer Preview 4. That means that users were unable to check the status of the battery, or maybe that Google even removed the feature all together. While it’s not a huge deal in terms of what it does, the Battery health feature has been long in the works.
So it would be disappointing not to have it available. Beyond that, it can be quite handy if you’re someone that’s interested in the health of their phone. When it comes to functionality, the phone is able to show just how depleted the battery is from the time of purchase. This detail becomes more important as more time passes, because a battery’s life is limited.
While you can could charging to 100 percent each time, it doesn’t mean a whole lot if your phone’s battery health is depleted by 50 percent. Luckily, users were able to get Battery health back by rebooting the phone. But it appears that a proper fix has now been released, and requires users to update the Google Play Services app to the latest, which comes in as version 25.14.62.
Although there are reports confirming that Battery health returns after the update, some users on Reddit are doubting just how accurate it might be, due to changes in the numbers. Again, all of this is still in the Developer Preview, which means there are going to be small bugs and glitches throughout the experience.
Luckily, we’re still some months away from a proper release, which by that time, everything will be fixed. If you want to give this update a try, you can always download the latest Developer Preview to your supported phone.
