What you need to know
- Code found in the Pixel Watch Management Service system app shows a reference to “Adaptive charging.”
- Pixel phones currently learn from your charging habits to determine when to limit charging to 80% to protect battery life.
- Wear OS watches currently have no way to stop charging before 100% power, though some can send a push notification to your phone.
Google has spent the last year hyper-focused on improving Android smartwatches’ battery life, particularly its own Pixel Watch 3. Now, based on an APK teardown of Pixel Watch system software, it appears the next battery-preserving feature will be adaptive charging, ported over from Pixel phones.
Android Authority posted an APK teardown on Monday showing the following string of code:
While the site didn’t find any additional info, it’s a fair assumption that the current Pixel Adaptive Charging feature on the Pixel 9 Pro and other Google phones will port to the Pixel Watch 3 in a highly similar form — if not other Android watches.
On Pixel phones, if you turn on Charging optimization, the Android software will “learn” from your charging habits for two weeks; then, whenever you plug your phone in at night, it will shut off charging at 80% and only bring it to 100% at the point that you typically unplug it in the morning.
You can also manually limit charging to 80% on Pixel phones, so we’re curious if that’ll be another option for Pixel Watches, in addition to adaptive charging. Given that the Pixel Watch 3 lasts at least 24 hours with AOD enabled — and can last up to 48 hours with lighter use — it should last you a full day even if you put it on at 80% power.
Depending on its size, the Pixel Watch 3 takes about 35 or 50 minutes to hit 80%, and 60 or 80 minutes to hit 100%. The slower charging past 80% is already a built-in form of adaptive charging. Still, once your watch hits 100%, your battery capacity will steadily decrease over time, which is why Google enabled full-charge notifications last year.
Now, this hidden code suggests Pixel Watch owners who don’t wear their watch overnight will have the option to enable adaptive charging and preserve that capacity as much as possible, while still having their watch fully topped off in the morning.
Since it’s a “permission” feature, Adaptive Charging should be off by default until you enable it; we know that some users will prefer their watch to hit 100% as fast as possible.
We know that Wear OS 6 should arrive this fall on the Pixel Watch 4, presumably with the new Gemini assistant. But it’s fair to assume that this adaptive charging feature will come to current Wear OS 5 models much sooner than that, and will hopefully be available on Galaxy and OnePlus Watches, too (eventually).
Even though Google has successfully extended battery life on its newer models, the Pixel Watch series remains comparatively short-lived when you look at the best smartwatches for long battery life. It needs all the help it can get to keep what capacity it has!