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You can never have enough battery life, but keeping your device’s battery at 100 percent constantly can reduce its life. Many laptops already use artificial intelligence to determine how a device uses its battery, and Chromebooks now seem to be heading that way, too.
As pointed out by 9to5Google this week, a new code change in the Chromium Gerrit hints at “adaptive charging” coming to Chromebooks. The description of the change says the feature uses machine learning to “minimize the amount of time the device spends on a full battery to extend battery life.”
This system would be similar to features we’ve seen on more expensive Windows laptops. For example, HP’s upcoming Elite Dragonfly 3 laptop will use intelligent charging, which, as the vendor puts it, “learns work patterns to optimize power consumption.” However, it’s unclear exactly how the evolving Chrome OS feature would work. It appears that Google allows the feature to be turned off, and a notification will let you know when it’s turned on.
Google already brought adaptive charging to its Pixel phones in 2020, but the feature works differently there, relying on alarms instead of machine learning. When you activate adaptive charging on, say, a Pixel 6, the phone uses your alarm settings to determine when you need the phone. The device then charges slowly overnight so it can hit 100 percent battery when you wake up instead of sitting at 100 percent for hours on end. Other smartphones have similar features.
It’s unclear whether adaptive charging for Chrome OS would be limited to Google’s own Pixelbook Chromebooks.