Android 15 could reach iPhone levels of standby battery life

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Android 15 Beta 2 went live this week, giving us a good idea of what to expect from the stable release later this year. We're now learning that Android 15 will also bring battery-related improvements, particularly during standby. This will be thanks to some new upgrades being made to Android's Doze Mode, first introduced with Android 6.0 Marshmallow.

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Android expert and fellow writer Mishaal Rahman spoke to Google's VP of Engineering for Android, Dave Burke, and President of the Android Ecosystem, Sameer Samat, during the recent I/O developer conference (via Android Authority). The chat revolved around Google's recent revelation that Wear OS 5 will consume 20% less battery power than Wear OS 4 (while tracking an outdoor marathon), with Samat detailing how the company went about achieving this milestone.

Simply put, Wear OS 5 will get smarter at running background tasks, with smartwatches conducting most of the background activity when the watch is charging rather than when it's on the user's wrist. Following up on Samat's comment, Burke jumped in to talk about "general power-saving improvements" coming to Android 15 this fall.

According to Burke, internal upgrades in Android 15 will result in devices entering doze mode 50% faster than on Android 14. This translates to a significantly better standby time than current Android smartphones, potentially gaining some parity with the Apple iPhones, which enjoy excellent standby times thanks to iOS optimizations. Thanks to these improvements in Android 15, Android devices could add up to three hours to their standby time, based on tests conducted by Google.

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This standby time upgrade could be a game changer for Android users, given that it will be available for all devices that can run Android 15. As Rahman notes, these changes won't make it to this year's Wear OS 5 operating system, since it is based on Android 14. However, Wear OS 5 should come with the improved background task management feature we touched on above, so it's not all bad news for Google's smartwatch platform.

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