A few years ago, Google introduced a new feature called adaptive charging aimed at improving the lifespan of the battery in its pixel smartphones. It has been proven that preventing your battery from being charged to 100 percent can keep it from degrading its capacity as quickly. While some OEMs give you the option to stop the battery from being charged to that level, Google takes things a bit further with its adaptive charging feature.
Adaptive charging for Google pixel smartphones charges the phone at a slow steady pace throughout the night and this is true even if your phone is connected to a charger that is capable of really fast charging speeds. It can be finicky since it requires you to begin charging the phone after 9 pm and you have to have an alarm set on your phone for some time between 5 and 10 in the morning. With this behavior, Google is then able to learn your charging habits so they can charge the phone slowly and steadily throughout the night but then let the battery reach 100 percent right before your alarm is set to go off.
This feature helps a lot since you aren’t having to go throughout the day with a phone that can only be used 85 or 90 percent as long as it’s capable of. However, this adaptive charging feature doesn’t account for people who like to sleep in on the weekends and it doesn’t help anyone who wants to charge their phone to full at night since this feature only allows the battery to be charged very slowly during those times.
If you want to charge your phone to full at night or you like to sleep in on the weekends, you might want to turn off the adaptive charging feature. While you can dig around the settings application to toggle this feature off, which can cause some people to forget to toggle it back on before Monday, Google has included a clever way to temporarily disable the Adaptive charging feature.
This works by simply unplugging the charging cable for a second or two and then plugging it right back in. Android is able to detect this action and knows to quickly charge the phone like normal. This process should even work with those who use wireless charging as they can simply lift the phone off the charging pad and then place it back down a second or two later.
While some people would just rather see Google add in a quick settings tile for fast charging their phone, it’s great to see such a simple solution to a common problem that many people are having with the Adaptive charging feature on their Google pixel smartphones.