Android 11 Developer Preview 11 landed yesterday, and it revealed quite a bit of information thus far. The newest piece of info that surface suggests that Google Pixel 5 may support reverse wireless charging.
Android 11’s hidden Battery Share menu actually suggests it may happen. Folks over at XDA Developers launched the ‘Battery Share’ activity in ‘SettingsGoogle’, and discovered the aforementioned feature.
Reverse wireless charging is almost certainly coming to the Google Pixel 5
Strings that the source managed to find suggest that Google is working on reverse wireless charging for the Pixel 5. The device itself is not mentioned, of course, but it is the first phone to ship with Android 11. So, you do the math.
To add more fuel to the fire, that activity name is prefaced with ‘com.google.android’, and not ‘com.android’. This suggests that this is more likely to be a Google feature, and not an AOSP one.
The strings for the Battery Share page actually state that “your phone’s battery will run out faster when using battery share. Battery Share works with compatible earbuds, watches, phones, and more”.
As you can see, reverse wireless charging hasn’t been mentioned, per se, but it’s quite obvious what Google is hinting at here. More than obvious, in fact.
Adding reverse wireless charging is the next logical step for the company. The Google Pixel 3, 3 XL, 4, and 4 XL all already support Qi wireless charging. So, it seems about time Google should add reverse wireless charging to the table as well, to its next phone.
Android 11 Developer Preview 1 revealed quite a bit of information thus far, aside from ‘Battery Share’. Android 11 will not be a huge revamp of Android OS, or anything of the sort. Google is planning to add a number of new features, though.
Android 11 will bring one-time permissions feature
The company is adding more focus on security, as expected. One-time permissions will become a thing in Android 11, while new biometric levels will be added as well.
The company will enable Chat Bubbles in Android 11. That will basically be a system-level equivalent of Facebook’s Chat Heads. You’ll be able to use them with pretty much every chat application, presuming that the developer allows it.
Ongoing chats from the notification shade will also become a thing in Android 11. The same goes for sending images from the notification shade.
Google has never released an Android Developer Preview sooner than this year. The company is probably trying to give OEMs plenty of time to work on optimizing Android 11 for their devices, before the OS launches later this year.