The battery is one of the first things that’s likely to degrade on your smartphone, so if you want to keep your handset for a long time – and not have to keep it tethered to a charger constantly – it’s important to maintain its battery health, and Google might be cooking up a new feature to help with that.
Android Authority has found a new ‘charging optimization’ page, hidden within the latest Android 15 beta. We say hidden, because it’s not actually active and accessible without tinkering with the code.
But the site did just that, and discovered within the page a new option to limit your phone’s charge to 80%, as you can see in the images below. An 80% limit can be handy, as only charging to 80% tends to be better for a battery than going all the way to 100%.
It’s not clear exactly which phones this feature might come to, but we’d expect it will roll out to the Pixel 8 line and other recent Pixel models. It may not come to other Android brands, but some, such as Samsung, already offer such a feature, as does Apple for its iPhones, so it makes sense for Google to catch up and do the same.
That said, based on what Android Authority found it doesn’t seem like the charging limit will be customizable, whereas with iOS 18, users can choose an 80%, 85%, 90% or 95% limit.
An alternative to adaptive
Still, this would be a step in the right direction, and a nice alternative to the adaptive charging feature that’s already available on Pixel phones. That learns your charging patterns, and only charges from 80% to 100% right before it expects you to unplug your phone.
It seems that adaptive charging will still be available too though, so you’ll likely be able to choose between an adaptive charge or an 80% limit.
However, Android Authority notes that given that this feature hasn’t yet been enabled in an Android 15 beta, it probably won’t launch with Android 15. Rather, it could land as part of the first Android 15 QPR (Quarterly Platform Release), which is likely to roll out towards the end of the year.
Android 15 itself could land as soon as August, so we should know soon whether this charging limit is a part of it or not.
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