Bluetooth Battery Rings Missing

job_shredder69

Hi, I'm wondering why the bluetooth battery rings isn't showing up when I pair my Pixel Buds? I'm on the stable 20250314 version. Is it a work in progress? Out of scope, perhaps?

Photo for illustration

de0u

job_shredder69 Are Bluetooth battery rings a feature of AOSP? Which Android devices have them?

job_shredder69

de0u Pixels were supposed to ship with it this March feature drop.

I couldn't find anything on Google's Android 15 release notes, but according to 9-5Google and other tech blogs claim that this visual upgrade is supposedly live with this latest version.

Check this out: https://9to5google.com/2025/03/04/android-15-qpr2-march-pixel-update/

Do we need Google Play Services to enable this?

de0u

job_shredder69 Pixels were supposed to ship with it this March feature drop.

Not all Pixel devices run the same operating system. GrapheneOS has some features that Google's stock OS doesn't have, and Google's stock OS has some features that they don't release to AOSP (or sometimes release to AOSP later).

The GrapheneOS project historically does not suppress or hide features that Google releases to AOSP. It would be surprising if Google had released Bluetooth battery rings to AOSP and if the GrapheneOS team had decided not to ship it.

Please note that I do not speak for the GrapheneOS project.

job_shredder69

Understood. Judging from the blog post, it seems that it's an AOSP feature but what do I know.

I'd like to hear from a dev why it wasn't included.

de0u

job_shredder69 Judging from the blog post, it seems that it's an AOSP feature but what do I know.

I don't see the term "AOSP" in that article. Am I overlooking it?

GrapheneOS is not the same as AOSP. AOSP is not the same as Google's Pixel OS.

Most press coverage about Android features on Pixels is about Google's OS, so if an article doesn't say "GrapheneOS" and doesn't say "AOSP" then it most likely isn't discussing them.

job_shredder69

You lost me at, "I don't see the term AOSP". Most of the Android 15 QPR2 was released with GOS, except for:

Battery percentage rings now appear in the Bluetooth Device details page, while a live image is used in the QS Tile.
The QR code when sharing Wi-Fi credentials now makes use of a Material You shape

As per GOS version 2025030500 changelog, "This release is based on Android 15 QPR2, the second quarterly release of Android 15."

My theory for not releasing it might be that the live image needs to be pulled from Google's servers instead of locally. I'd really appreciate a concrete answer from the developers because your response didn't quite answer my question.

de0u

job_shredder69 You lost me at, "I don't see the term AOSP".

Just as some computers run Windows and some computers run macOS and some computers run Linux, and they are different operating systems, some Google Pixels run Google's Pixel OS and some Pixels run AOSP and some Pixels run GrapheneOS, and they are different operating systems. They are related but they are not the same. Nothing automatically moves from a release by Google of Google's OS to anything else. Also, nothing automatically moves from a release by GrapheneOS to Google's OS (for example, Google's OS does not have duress PINs).

Google releases some features of their OS to AOSP, at their discretion. If and when that happens, other organizations, such as Samsung, Sony, and GrapheneOS, can deploy those features. GrapheneOS generally does, and generally very fast.

But Google does not release all of their features to AOSP. As long as Google has not released Bluetooth battery rings to AOSP it is genuinely quite likely that Bluetooth battery rings will not be a feature of GrapheneOS.

Articles in the press are almost always about Google's OS. That means that some features mentioned in those articles will show up in GrapheneOS quickly (the ones released by Google to AOSP) but others will show up in GrapheneOS after a delay (if Google eventually releases them to AOSP), and some will never show up in GrapheneOS. Articles in the press will generally not say which features are in which category.

Typically if an article says a feature is part of Android 15 QPR2 and GrapheneOS issues a release based on QPR2 and that feature is not present, that means Google is keeping that feature to themselves rather than releasing it to AOSP, in which case there is no telling if or when Google might release it.

job_shredder69 My theory for not releasing it might be that the live image needs to be pulled from Google's servers instead of locally.

Nothing moves automatically from Google to GrapheneOS. The things that do move are manually released by Google to AOSP and then manually imported from AOSP by the GrapheneOS team. What moves is source code and firmware blobs, not "live images".