We all know how much of a battery guzzler Android Lollipop can be, and this is set to chance with Android M with a few extra tricks up its sleeves to keep your battery lasting longer. To showcase how much power savings the new features bring in a real life setting, a Nexus 5 was loaded with a copy of the Android M Developer Preview and measured against the same model with Android 5.1.1 in it.
Of the new features that will be coming with Android M is Doze and App Standby which helps save on power in two different ways. Doze for instance is activated when your device is inactive for a certain period of time and causes your phone to go into a “deeper sleep” and halt processes that would normally continue running when on standby.
Once you pick up your phone Doze gets disabled and it resumes as usual, doubling standby time. App Standby on the other hand prohibits inactive apps from getting network support and open jobs are suspended once your device is unplugged from the charger. When your phone is plugged in again, the apps will reconnect. This would work best if Android M gave users the ability to enable or disable the feature for particular apps.
So how did the devices do?
The result? after 8 hours in standby the Nexus 5 with Android 5.1.1 consumed just 4% of battery as opposed to the Nexus 5 with Android M which only consumed 1.5% battery. After 24 hours the Nexus with Lollipop had eaten through 12% of its battery while the Android M device had only consumed 4.5% of power during the same duration. After an additional 24 hours the Android 5.1.1 device had chewed its way through 24% battery while the Android M Nexus 5 had taken just 9%. In total the Lollipop device was projected to last for about 200 hours on standby while the latter was projected to last more than double of that at 533 hours on standby.
LG and Huawei have also been rumoured to be in the process of producing the next gen of Nexus smartphones that possibly might come with Android M pre-loaded.
Suffice to say Android M is already looking good from the power consumption department and we can’t wait to get a hold of the full release when its officially released in Q3.
