Google Remotely Changed the Settings on a Bunch of Phones Running Android 9 Pie (theverge.com)

Last week, a mix of people who own Google Pixel phones and other devices running Android 9 Pie noticed that the software's Battery Saver feature had been switched on -- seemingly all by itself. And oddly, this was happening when the phones were near a full charge, not when the battery was low. From a report: Initially it was assumed that this was some kind of minor bug in the latest version of Android, which was only released a few weeks ago. Some users thought they might've just enabled Battery Saver without realizing. But it was actually Google at fault. The company posted a message on Reddit last night acknowledging "an internal experiment to test battery saving features that was mistakenly rolled out to more users than intended." So Google had remotely -- and accidentally -- changed a phone setting for a bunch of real-world customers. Several staffers at The Verge experienced the issue. "We have now rolled battery saver settings back to default. Please configure to your liking," the Pixel team wrote on Reddit before apologizing for the error.

Comments

Any word on how it was done?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Is there any information on how the settings change was made?

Obviously, OS updates could change settings(sometimes by legitimate necessity since an OS update can add new settings that need a default of some kind, remove features that used to have settings but no longer need them; or modify a feature enough that there isn't a clear answer for what 'preserving' the old setting would mean); so if it was done by pushing out an OS update with the wrong settings that would be sloppy but not fundamentally sinister.

If, however, Google has sent MDM-like remote control(probably in Google Play Services somewhere), and they used that to toggle the setting things get rather less innocent.

Re:Next Week's Headlines

[Rei]

I actually like both. I use the Sony Lifelogger app, although wish there was a better one out there (that one is too focused on fitness and they nerfed the timeline several years ago).

What I really want from Google is a way to set a percentage charge limit. There's no point to putting excess wear on my battery on days when I'm not going to need a 100% charge. The rate of reactions with the electrolyte (and deposition of deposits on the anode) is proportional to the voltage; the lower the voltage you store your battery at, the lower the rate of degradation. I've seen an app to let you impose charge limits but it requires root and doesn't work on all phones.

Even better than just a percentage charge limit would be scheduled charges, preferably with different schedules for different times of day. So e.g. for nighttime charges, to charge to 60% as soon as it's plugged in, then to wait until 20 minutes before my alarm to charge to a target percentage - but for daytime charges, to charge immediately to the target percentage.