Adroid L Feature Spotlight: Project Volta

Google took us by surprise and introduced Android L at their annual I/O conference back in June. Android L is the biggest update made to Google’s mobile operating system since its debut back in 2008, both in terms of design and functionality.

Besides drastically improving the interface with the help of Material Design, besides making notifications more accessible, and besides introducing ART runtime, the new Android L update also aims to address one of the biggest issues of modern smartphones: battery life. The autonomy improvements are centered around Project Volta, Google’s attempt to bring better battery life to Android-powered smartphones and tablets.

How big the battery life improvements will be? For example, a Nexus 5 running Android L Developer Preview can get 30 – 40% more battery life which is an insanely huge improvement. How is this even possible? Well the new job scheduler API is one of the factors. It instructs apps to do more of their unimportant tasks while your phone is charging instead of while running on battery.

Another change brought by Android L is the introduction of Power Saver mode into stock Android. You can have battery saver always on, or you can instruct your device to turn on battery saver as soon as your battery drops to a certain level.

The Battery screen in Settings has also been improved. It now brings a better insight on how your battery has been used, is capable of showing how much time you have left until your phone dies, or how much it will take to fully charge your battery.

We are glad to see that Google is making efforts to improve the battery life of the devices running on their mobile operating system. Will the battery improvements be just as drastic in Android L final as in Developer Preview? We’ll have to wait and see.