Android 11 will tell you if you’re not doing wireless charging properly

Although we’re not sure how useful it’ll be

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

TheAndroid 11Developers' Preview has been out for a while now, giving us a first look at what theoperating systemmight bring when it’s fully released towards the end of 2020, and it looks like there might be a feature that helps with wireless charging.

As discovered by someRedditors, when you put your smartphone on a wireless charger in the wrong place (so it’s not directly over the wireless charging module) an error message will appear prompting you to re-position the device.

This notification says ‘Realign phone to charge wirelessly’ and has only been seen onGooglePixel devices so far.

This feature might help people with certain wireless charging pads, as well as those who are trying to use devices with wireless power-sharing, to make sure the phone is being charged as efficiently as possible.

Is it that useful though?

It can be annoying when a phone slips off a wireless charger, or if you hastily put your device down in the wrong position, but we’re not sure that anyone’s ever had the problem of not knowing if the device is charging.

Many smartphones have animations to show they’re wirelessly charging (like theHuawei Mate 20 Proin the image at the top of this article), and it’s very easy to see if the battery icon at the top of the phone is charging or not, which is just as useful an indicator as to whether your smartphone is powering up.

So while this feature may not be groundbreaking, it perhaps serves better as an indicator of Google’s push towards more wireless charging for Android phones. The Developer Preview for Android 11 also showed a juicy tidbit ofGoogle Pixel 5information, suggesting itmight have reverse power-sharing, so it seems that wireless charging and power sharing may be an emphasis for Android 11, in a similar way to how support for foldable operating systems was a big feature of Android 10.

Get the best Black Friday deals direct to your inbox, plus news, reviews, and more.

Sign up to be the first to know about unmissable Black Friday deals on top tech, plus get all your favorite TechRadar content.

We’ll find out in a few months atGoogle IO 2020, when Google will show off Android 11 in its first official form.

Tom Bedford was deputy phones editor on TechRadar until late 2022, having worked his way up from staff writer. Though he specialized in phones and tablets, he also took on other tech like electric scooters, smartwatches, fitness, mobile gaming and more. He is based in London, UK and now works for the entertainment site What To Watch.

He graduated in American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. Prior to working on TechRadar, he freelanced in tech, gaming and entertainment, and also spent many years working as a mixologist.

WhatsApp will soon help you spot misinformation – here’s how

Google Messages on Android could soon get a big photo-sharing boost

This new phishing strategy utilizes GitHub comments to distribute malware