Google seems to be getting serious about apps that drain too much battery. Late last year, Google said it would crack down on apps that consume too much power, and this is how the company is doing it.
Now, the Play Store will show a warning box on apps that drain too much battery life in the background. Google’s Developer Blog showed that the warning box will say “this app may use more battery than expected due to high background activity.”
On March 1, the Google Play Store started rolling out the “wake lock technical quality treatments to improve battery drain.” The treatment will roll out gradually to apps that run in the background. And over the following weeks, apps that exceed the “Excess Partial Wake Lock” threshold in Android vitals will be impacted. Google will decrease its store presence and exclude them from discovery surfaces like recommendations.
Partial wake locks are what keep a phone’s CPU running even when the screen is off, increasing battery consumption. While sometimes this is necessary, some apps go too far, and Google believes this should help rein them in. Since this started rolling out, Google says they’ve already seen some changes from developers.
If you’re a developer, you’re probably going to be annoyed that your app isn’t being recommended and has a warning label, so it should encourage you to do something about it. And, on the other hand, if you’re a consumer, you probably won’t download apps with this warning, which again should force developers to make these changes.
Source: Android Developer Blog
