Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Mobile
  3. News

Android O could bring a Bluetooth battery indicator for your headphones

By

android bluetooth battery phone headphones
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Android may soon get a helpful feature for those that use Bluetooth headphones — the ability to tell you exactly how much battery your Bluetooth devices have left. The feature recently gained support from the Android Open Source Project (AOSP), XDA Developers reports. What that means is that Android, by default, will allow users to check their Bluetooth devices battery on their phone.

Now, as noted by some engineers in the original post, some third parties — including Samsung, LG, and OnePlus — have supported the feature in their software for some time now, as has iOS. So in this case, Google is finally adding a feature to stock Android devices that others have been thinking about for a while. It is also not clear exactly when the feature will make its way to a full Android release — though considering the next Pixel is rumored to do away with the headphone jack, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see it pop up in Android O.

Recommended Videos

We also do not yet know exactly how the feature will be implemented on Android. As noted in a report from The Verge, the battery status may show up in a notification or somewhere in the settings. Thankfully for phone manufacturers, it looks like the feature is customizable, so they can have it show up wherever they want or wherever it fits into their software.

Android O is the next major release of Android and its set to bring a number of new features. For example, as we noted in our hands-on review of the latest Android O Developer Preview, notifications are set to get revamped with Notification Dots — making the operating system a little more like iOS. On top of that, users will now also be able to snooze alerts and set them to pop up at a later time. To do that, you drag a notification to the right-hand side of the notification shade, and a little clock icon will appear. Tap on that will bring up the ability to reschedule the notification. Another major new feature in Android O is “Copy Less,” which basically uses machine learning to predict when you want to copy and paste text and the feature will do it automatically.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Christian de Looper
Christian de Looper
Contributor
Christian’s interest in technology began as a child in Australia, when he stumbled upon a computer at a garage sale that he…
Google is bringing AI superpowers to your smartphone camera, and it looks ridiculous
Google Astra on a phone.

It seems AI assistants are antique, or that’s what Google wants you to believe, for we are in the era of AI agents -- and Google I/O 2024 has quickly proven that. Say hello to Project Astra, a generative AI agent with vision, text, and speech capabilities, with a sprinkling of memory and spatial awareness capabilities in tow.

Think of it as eyes for your phone that can make sense of the world around you. Point it at a mathematical equation, and it will solve it. Pointing the camera at a cat? Astra will suggest an apt name for the feline meow-ster. Ask it where you left your earbuds, and if the camera sensor has seen them, it will say something like, “You left them on the sofa.”

Read more
Android 15 might add a new way to charge your gadgets
The Android 15 logo on a smartphone.

Wireless charging has been a fringe feature for over a decade, despite Apple's push into the ecosystem with the iPhone X and its later adoption of MagSafe. It has been limited to flagship phones, save for a few exceptions, mostly due to the painfully slow charging speeds. But with Android 15, Google now seems to offer phone makers additional reasons to adopt wireless charging even without dedicated hardware.

Instead of relying on a dedicated charging coil, Android 15 could enable wireless charging on phones with Near Field Communications (or NFC) tech. Android Authority dug up instances from the source code of Android 15's first user beta, which arrived last week, that suggests the implementation.
Not new, but definitely noteworthy
Samsung Galaxy S23 FE Tushar Mehta / Digital Trends

Read more
iOS 18 could make my iPhone look like Android, and I hate it
The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max and the Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra's rear panels.

If rumors are to be believed, iOS 18 will allow you to customize the home screen on your iPhone more substantially than ever before. This feature will be familiar to Android phone owners, but I don’t want my iPhone to look like an Android phone.

It’s a weird double-edged sword, as by giving you more freedom to make the home screen look unique, iOS may also lose what makes it unique compared to the less constrained world of Android.
iOS 18 and your iPhone home screen

Read more