Nokia Phones No Longer Aggressively Killing Background Apps, Switch to Adaptive Battery: HMD Global

HMD Global, the Nokia-brand licensee, has announced that it has moved from its aggressive battery-saving technology to Adaptive Battery feature that was introduced by Google with the Android 9 Pie version. The company revealed that it gradually started migrating phones that were getting updated to Android Pie from previous Android versions to Adaptive Battery and the switch is now complete for all devices. The company also added that the Nokia phones that are being released with Android 9 Pie out of the box don't include the company's older battery saving technology called Evenwell.

“Adaptive battery uses deep learning to understand usage patterns and prioritise battery and is more intelligent AI driven approach for battery and performance management and is available across the range of Nokia smartphones running Android 9 Pie,” HMD Global wrote on its community website.

“When our devices that launched with Android N or Android O originally upgraded to Android 9 Pie, we started to gradually disable Evenwell while carefully monitoring end user feedback. Now we have completely disabled Evenwell from our legacy devices so even if you see the solution there, it does not do anything,” the company added.

The solutions like Evenwell have long been criticised for being over-enthusiastic about closing background processes, in turn breaking key third-party functions, to save some battery juice. As battery tech hasn't improved at the same pace as other smartphone components, the smartphone makers sometimes opt for drastic measures to give the smartphone owners more battery life.

“This affects most of the apps which are not just another browser window. Most affected are alarm clocks, health trackers, automation apps or simply anything which needs to do some job for you at a particular moment when you don't use your phone,” Don't Kill My App, a website launched to shame OEMs for their extreme battery saving technologies, writes in its mission statement.

HMD Global currently ranks third among the worst offenders, however thanks to its switch to Adaptive Battery, its ranking is likely to improve.