Adaptive charging from Google finally works better on Android 12
Google introduced the new adaptive charging feature in December last year, but to date, this charging feature has not worked as promised. That seems to be changing now for specific Pixel devices that run Android 12, and we should finally be seeing those promised adaptive charging features.
The adaptive charging feature comes with all the latest Pixel phones and preserves battery life by charging slowly at night. The goal was that your phone would start charging when you connect it to the charger at night, and once it reaches 80%, it would slow down the charging speed to reach 100% capacity in the morning when your alarm goes off.
There are a few requirements that need to be in place for adaptive charging to take place. First, your phone has to be connected to the charger to start charging after 9 pm. The second is that you must also set the alarm for the next morning between 5 pm and 10 pm. All things considered, these requirements are not too difficult to meet.
However, users often reported that their devices already reached 100% battery life hours before the alarm was set to go off. This indicated that the adaptive charging feature wasn’t quite adapting to the users’ habits. It may be possible that Google was just overly cautious with the initial rollout of adaptive charging to ensure that users don’t wake up with a phone that hasn’t charged fully. After all, it is much more frustrating to wake up to a phone that isn’t completely charged despite being connected to the charger the whole night.
Google has made considerable improvements to the adaptive charging feature, and users running Android 12 have reported that their phones are reaching 100% battery power much closer to their set alarms. Many users report that the battery reaches 100% between 30 and 90 minutes before their alarm goes off. Much closer than previously reported.
It is unclear exactly when Google started rolling out these improvements, as this feature is not as easily monitored as many other features. However, the improvements may have already been present even before the rollout of Android 12s latest beta. Most of the reports of a better adaptive charging experience were from Pixel users running the Android 12s beta version.
Closing words
We are finally starting to see the adaptive charging features that Google promised Pixel users in December 2020. Any improvements that can save the battery life of a phone are exciting. With it finally looking to be working with Android 12, I look forward to more Android brands starting to incorporate adaptive charging into their devices.
It drains power faster this upgrade is crappy, used the beta it sucks power faster
Just let the users set charge limits manually. problem solved!
I wake up at 7 am. My charger is connected to a timer which switches off after 1.5 hrs initially and again switches on at 6am and switches off at 7 am
So it will never work for anyone who works second or third shift. It is probably fine to leave it at default but I would want to have more granular control over when it switches to adaptive and how long to charge slowly.
They need to give the users more control. What about people who work nights, or don’t use their phone as an alarm? I’d like to be able to manually set the schedule for adaptive charging.
you must set the alarm for the next morning between 5 pm and 10 pm.
Did you mean 5 am and 10 am?
That means you have to set the alarm between 5pm and 10pm. It’s OK to set your alarm to ring at 1am but not later than 12pm or the phone turns into a pumpkin or something. Night shift need not apply. Phone must be aligned toward Polaris, too.
Finally works better, ya’ know?
/s
What? Are you kidding me? Who sleeps in the am?