Samsung secret battery protection feature: Everything you need to know

The lack of a dedicated section in settings that shows you the overall health of your phone’s battery is one of those features that Android should have had for years, along with the ability to optimise your charging. However, while this is a fairly basic addition on iPhones, the only battery info Android phones offer is the percentage of battery left. That is now changing with Android 14, starting with some Samsung phones.

As per a 9to5Google report, Samsung Galaxy smartphone users who are running Android 14 via OneUI 6.1 will get a secret ‘Battery Protection’ feature. Offering some new charging optimisation options, the panel allows users to take steps to ensure their battery lasts longer.

How Samsung battery protection works

The feature allows three levels of optimisation on supported Samsung devices once enabled. The ‘Basic Protection’ prevents these phones from maintaining 100 per cent charge when you leave the device plugged in, but still ensures a minimum of 95 per cent.

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‘Adaptive Protection’ forces the phone to stop its fast-charging protocol once the device crosses 80 per cent and allows it to gradually charge to 100 per cent depending on usage habits. ‘Maximum Protection’ is the most extreme option of the three, strictly restricting the device to only charge up to 80 per cent, to ensure a longer life of the battery.

How to enable Samsung battery protection

Enabling the feature is a little tricky, especially if you aren’t particularly well-versed with running ‘Activities’ on Android. This is similar to using the ‘Run’ command on Windows to manually open up specific settings menus and other pages.

To go through this, users will first need to install an Activity-launching app (like Activity Launcher). They must then “BatteryProtectionActivity” as an activity to reach the new menu.

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The feature may soon come to all supported smartphones without this complex method in the future. With Google already laying the groundwork for battery optimisation and battery health features being baked into Android 14, we can expect such features to gradually make it to a dedicated menu in the Settings app. Other brands may soon follow with their own battery optimisation feature into their own software skins.