Pixel owners now gets a much-needed nightly reminder through adaptive charging

With the December 2020 Feature Drop, Google gave Pixel 4 and subsequent smartphones adaptive charging. By slowly charging your phone overnight and topping it off just before your alarm goes off, this useful feature seeks to increase the battery life of your phone. Up until now, the only way to determine whether adaptive charging was in use was through a small, subtle, and unreadable notice on the lock screen. Even worse, going back and forth into the Settings menu was necessary to disable the feature for a single night. The Pixel phones have started flashing a notification while Adaptive Charging is activated, which has caused this to change.

Adaptive charging on Pixel 4

As per information via 9to5Google, most of the pixel users are observing this feature in notification bar on their devices. Along with that this feature contains an option for shutting down this notification as if you want your phone to be fully charged even before your alarm goes off. There’s already an option there for bedtime mode.

If you put in a Pixel 4 or newer phone between 9 PM and 4 AM and have an active alarm set for any time between 3 AM and 10 AM, adaptive charging will function. Through the night, the phone will charge gradually, reaching 100% just before the alarm is ready to sound. To extend the life of lithium-ion batteries, such as those found in smartphones, experts advise against plugging them in continuously at full charge.

Google’s version has an odd quirk when compared to iPhones and other Android phones: an active alarm is necessary to activate the feature, making adaptive charging less adaptive. Based on your sleeping habits and usage, iPhone’s Optimal Battery Charging determines when to top off the battery.

The freshly launched March 2023 Feature Drop does not appear to be connected to the Adaptive Charging notification. It can take some time for the Private Compute Services update from Google to appear on your phone before it begins to roll out.