Google understands that battery life is a huge consideration for consumers when purchasing smartphones, which is why it has launched "Project Volta." A venture that intends to boost battery life of all kinds of devices running on Android L.
Surveys conducted reveal that battery is, in fact, the topmost concern of smartphone consumers.
"When asked about the importance of features, 89% cited battery life as 'important,' with only 11% citing it as 'neutral' or 'not important,' according to an online panel of 1,000 Britons surveyed by research company GMI," a report reads.
Research says Google’s project involves a test of Android L and its entire effect to the battery life of Android-run devices, making sure there’s no room for too much drainage.
Part of the project is a tool dubbed as Battery Historian, which provides developers a look at what exactly is draining the device’s battery and how much use of their apps drain the battery. With this tool, the company was able to make some changes to Android to minimize the overall consumption of battery
Another significant aspect of the project is JobScheduler, which aims to address the battery drain issue of waking up the mobile phone as big contributing factor in burning two minutes of the standby time. As its name suggests, JobScheduler schedules the cleaning up of mobile phone system such as log uploading and database cleanup. No network tasks by the operating system would be conducted when the phone unit doesn’t have any network connection.
Wanting to see the real difference, Ars Technica ran a test on Android L on a Nexus 5 device. It discovered that the phone with Android L indicated 36 percent more of battery life or that is about two extra battery hours, than when it was on Android 4.4 KiKat.
The test also showed the battery saver feature that minimizes the performance of the mobile device and cuts screen brightness and background data, specifically when the device only has 15 percent battery life. Ars Technica decided to disable such feature, though, and went on to use the device on full power to see entire results.
Ars Technica was, however, quick to remind that its test run doesn’t represent what Android L could really achieve once it officially comes out. The existing release of Google’s Android L project is only a developer preview. Yet, it believes the final product would possibly come out even much better.
