Improvement to the Pixel 6 Pro's battery life could be foreshadowing the arrival of a key feature
When it came to be known that the Pixel 6 Pro would sport a battery with the capacity of 5003mAh, it sounded like good news for those buying the device. It was the largest battery ever included with a Pixel phone. True, it has to power the 1440p resolution display, 5G connectivity, and a 120Hz refresh rate. But it should still take users through a full day, right?
Update to Android 13 QPR1 Beta seems to take Pixel 6 Pro battery life to the next tier
And even the smaller 4614mAh battery included with the Pixel 6 seemed like it could last all day since the device was equipped with a lower 1080p resolution and a less taxing 90Hz refresh rate. But since the release of the two handsets last year, nothing in real life about the battery life seemed to be what was expected and with the Pixel 6 Pro, it seemed that the battery was draining way too fast. One ridiculous morning the phone lasted all of three hours before dropping from 100% to 15% with no additional usage.
Installing the Android 13 QPR1 Beta can bring performance improvements to your Pixel before the rest of the public gets them
Now let's get one thing clear. Even though the battery capacity of the Pixel 6 Pro is larger than that of the battery powering the iPhone 13 Pro Max, you'd never confuse the two in a battery test. Since the iPhone 11 Pro Max, it feels like Apple has concerned itself with battery life more than ever. Pixel 6 Pro users might have been able to put up with poor battery life if the device worked with a 60W fast charger. But the 23W fast charging capability for the Pixel 6 Pro is slow as molasses.
After a spate of complaints about the Pixel 6 Pro battery late last month, Google included a bug fix with the September monthly update to solve the most recent problem with the component. Unfortunately, for one reason or another, Verizon failed to push out the update for about three weeks leading some users, like this writer, to install the Android 13 QPR1 Beta update instead.
While the battery life did show some improvement after joining the beta for the December quarterly Pixel feature drop, everyone seems to forget that if you use the Adaptive Battery feature, the phone takes time to learn how you use your phone so that it knows when to supply certain apps with battery power. It can take up to two weeks for the Adaptive Battery feature to learn when and where to send battery power.
Battery life has been greatly improved on the Pixel 6 Pro over the last couple of weeks
And now that it has been about two weeks since joining the Android 13 QPR1 Beta, this writer has seen a huge jump in battery life on the Pixel 6 Pro. Usually, testing a beta is associated with lower battery life. But the Quarterly Platform Release (QPR) Betas are different since they include upcoming new features for compatible Pixel models which might include improved battery life. In this case, since I didn't want to wait for Verizon to push out the September update any longer, it was included with the Android 13 QPR1 Beta update which did exterminate the bug that was warming up the phones and draining the battery.
Today has thus far been the best for the battery on the handset. Where normally I might have about 38% battery life remaining as I write this, my Pixel 6 Pro shows 62% of the battery life is remaining. And this could, just could be a clue about a particular feature that Pixel 6 Pro users have been dying for. No, not the Dynamic Island! Hidden animation in the Android 13 QPR1 Beta shows a woman staring at her phone to set up a secure Face Unlock system.
Yes, the Pixel 6 Pro is still rumored to receive Face Unlock through a feature codenamed "Traffic Light." You see, unlike the Pixel 6 or the Pixel 6a, the Pixel 6 Pro sports a front-facing camera sensor with Dual Pixel Auto-Focus (DPAF) which allows secure depth maps to be made of the user's face. Besides the aforementioned animation, strings of code have been discovered that say, "Face Unlock works best when there’s enough light and you’re not wearing a mask or dark glasses." Another string of code points out that "If you normally wear eyeglasses, you can wear them during setup."
But Google might have been worried about the impact that Face Unlock could have on the battery life of the Pixel 6 Pro which is why we could be seeing a nice improvement after installing the Android 13 QPR1 Beta.
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