Pixels could soon get AI-powered ‘Battery Usage Summaries’

Robert Triggs / Android AuthorityTL;DR Google is working on a new AI-powered “Battery Usage Summaries” feature for Pixel devices. It will use Gemini Nano for on-device analysis of battery usage patterns and also offer tips to improve battery life. The feature will include only apps actively used in the last 14 days and will exclude system apps from its analysis. It seems phones are getting bigger batteries every year, yet it’s still hard to know exactly how long your phone’s battery will last. While most phones, including Pixels, have a battery usage section, it’s basically just a generic graph showing battery drain. However, Google seems to be working to make the battery health section on Pixel devices more useful and easier to understand.You’re reading an Authority Insights story. Authority Insights brings you all the latest exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage from the Android Authority team that you won’t find anywhere else.Android 17 QPR 2 Beta 3 contains a bunch of strings hinting at a new “Battery usage summaries” feature Google is working on. With a bit of tinkering, we managed to get it to show up on our Pixel.The battery summaries feature will be accessible from the three-dot menu icon in the Battery Health section. There, users can enable or disable it. It’s not fully functional yet, and enabling the feature just showed an error saying, “Device Health services not responding. Check back later.”The summaries will not include battery usage by system apps, since those can’t be disabled. Instead, the feature will focus solely on apps actively used within the last 14 days to generate battery summaries. It will also provide personalized tips to improve battery life.Additional strings we found in the code suggest the feature will use Gemini Nano to generate battery summaries locally. Google will also highlight on-device processing in the feature’s description. However, this means that battery summaries will most likely not be available on Pixel devices that don’t support Gemini Nano. As a result, devices older than the Pixel 8 series are unlikely to get the feature.The feature will also let users provide feedback on the summaries. Users can give positive feedback, including “Accurate,” “Insightful,” “Easy to understand,” and “Useful actions.” They will also be able to provide negative feedback using options like “Inaccurate,” “Not insightful,” “Hard to understand,” “Poor actions,” and “Missing information.”Here are all the strings we found in Android 17 QPR 2 Beta 3 related to the “Battery Summary” feature:CodeBattery usage summaries See a summary of your app and battery usage, and get personalized tips to help improve your battery life. Your data stays private and never leaves your device Gemini nano updating... Summary will be available in a few minutes Usual battery life is calculated based on your last 14 days of activity. System apps are essential software for your Pixel and can’t be turned off. To simplify, summaries only include the apps you actively use.Though the feature isn’t live yet, Google has already laid out most of the groundwork in Beta 3. This could mean we might see AI-powered battery summaries in a future Pixel Drop or in the stable QPR 2 build that’s expected in December.⚠️ An APK teardown helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.Thank you for being part of our community. Read our Comment Policy before posting.