Google accidentally remotely turned on battery saver for many Android Pie devices

On September 13th, many users running Android 9 Pie found battery saver to have randomly switched on, even if the device was fully charged. Lots of reports popped up on Reddit and a clarification from Google followed after a while.

Battery saver limits background processes and keeps apps from refreshing until you open them. It’s not something that you want to enable all the time and you should use it when you’re running low on battery and need that extra longevity.

When the people affected dived into settings, they saw it was set to turn on at 99% battery. That’s strange because the maximum you can go to is 75% to automatically switch it on. Google gave the following clarification:

“Hi all, some of you may have noticed that battery saver turned on automatically today. This was an internal experiment to test battery saving features that was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended. We have now rolled battery saver settings back to default. Please configure to your liking. Sorry for the confusion.”

Google is able to run device experiments via system apps like Device Health Services and Google Play. It’s quite outlandish, though, that Google can change settings like this and it serves as a reminder that Google has the power to remotely control, change, or even kill your device.

Source: Reddit
Featured-Image: Gadget Hacks