Image credit – Android Police
Google Maps’ location sharing feature is pretty cool. It lets your contact know where you are at the moment so they know how far away you are and how long you might take to arrive. It can also help them point out if you are lost or provide directions. However given how much battery navigation apps can drain, this is obviously not a feature to enable 24/7.
Now according to Android Police, it seems that Google Maps has been updated with a feature that will show you the battery level of the person that you’re sharing your location with. Why is this important, you ask? Basically if you know that the person you’re sharing your location with is running low on battery, you could stop the feature to help them conserve their battery levels.
It can also let you know that because their battery is low, maybe calling them isn’t such a good idea and that a simple text message will suffice. As Android Police notes, this is actually not necessarily a new feature as it was discovered earlier this year during an APK teardown, but it looks like Google has decided to finally roll it out to users.
It also seems to have undergone some changes where previously it would state battery levels in plain text, but as you can see in the screenshot above, it now shows battery levels using percentage.
Filed in . Read more about Google and Google Maps.