What you need to know
- Google states that the Play Store will display a warning for apps that may excessively drain your device’s battery.
- This is a part of its Excessive Partial Wake Lock threshold, which analyzes how much background use an app is pulling and warns users if it’s far too much.
- The Google Play Store also warns users about apps that might be riddled with problems, using reports and issues experienced by devices similar to yours.
Power efficiency is a major concern in our everyday phones, which is why Google is raising awareness about apps that might not feel the same.
To get a handle on this, 9to5Google reports the Google Play Store has started rolling out warnings for apps that may drain your battery excessively. These warnings are bold, featuring a pale red hue that says, “This app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.” The “background activity” portion of this warning is where Google wants developers to pay attention. The publication spotted an Android Developers blog post that goes into more detail about this Play Store addition.
Google states this warning is a part of its new “Excessive Partial Wake Lock” threshold for Android devices. If a developer’s app is within an acceptable or “good” threshold, then users won’t see a warning (which is what we all want). However, if an app is deemed to have exceeded its background presence limit, Google’s Excessive Partial Wake Lock takes effect.
According to Google, “bad behavior” in this threshold is defined by whether or not an app has held “a non-exempted partial wake lock for at least two hours on average while the screen is off in more than 5% of user sessions in the past 28 days.”
The company says that while wake locks are “sometimes necessary,” there are apps that conduct this behavior inefficiently. Google’s looking to put a stop to that by bringing that to the developer’s attention—but the user is first, as they can steer clear to avoid popping their phone on its charger more often. Google states these warnings on the Play Store have started rolling out since March 1.
Helpful warnings
Google first announced the development of these warnings last fall, as a way to help users keep their precious battery power longer. It was stated that Google worked with Samsung to develop the metric for this threshold, which combines real-world device data and insights to ensure its accuracy is as high as possible.
Helping users avoid excessive battery drain is just one aspect that the Play Store works to keep us from. Google also rolled out a Play Store update that warns users about apps riddled with problems. The company uses data from other devices similar to yours as a reference. If others have experienced extreme crashes, freezes, and other issues, that will negatively affect the Play Store’s perception of the product. Google will inform users about this, letting them decide if they should install or not.
Android Central’s Take
We mentioned something important in our previous coverage of Google’s work to develop its Excessive Partial Wake Lock: waking up to a phone with a much lower battery percentage never feels good. There are times when I’ve charged my phone, gone to bed—or even gone to complete some housework—and its eight, ten percent lower. Strange, right? I wasn’t using it. My phone was sitting idle. Excessive background use is the main culprit here, and I can appreciate Google realizing this and encouraging devs to get their apps together.
