With the latest Pixel Feature Drop, all Pixel Launcher users got this new battery widget implemented, which can provide information about the battery status of connected Bluetooth devices at a glance. However, this should only have won over users who found out about it in the tech media, because it was so well hidden. As the current Android 12 QPR3 Beta 3 shows, this will change with the next feature drop.
There are more and more devices connected to the smartphone permanently or at least for a long time via Bluetooth and, in the case of mobile devices, they have their own battery. With the battery gadget Google wants to make it especially easy for users to monitor the battery status of these devices. There is a list of all currently connected devices, including the last reported power level.
Some devices may consist of multiple drives and are listed accordingly, as you can see in the screenshot above. The smartphone itself with the Pixel Buds attached already fills four rows: the smartphone, the case, the left earbud, and the right earbud. If device support will increase in the future, you’ll probably need to do a bundle. So far, not even Wear OS smartwatches are supported.
But not only does the widget have to catch up technically, it hasn’t been that easy to track it so far either. Hardly any user who hasn’t heard of it in the tech media has probably come across it.
The widget was previously hidden in the “Configuration Services” entry, which hardly any users have opened. It still appears in the settings and with the same icon. But with the recent release Android 12 QPR3 Beta 3 there was a small change that makes it easier to find: as of this version, the widget category is simply called “Battery” (in German, maybe “akku”) and shows the corresponding energy icon.
When browsing widgets, more users are likely to stumble upon this handy tool. Believe it or not, this tweak is the biggest change in Android 12 QPR3 to date, seen by end users. Not in vain, because it is the beta of the Drop function, which does not usually happen in the operating system, but it does within apps with new features. The stable version is expected to be released in early June.
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