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This should not be something that alleged without evidence. It would be trivial to take multiple phones with different battery levels and compare the prices. Yo

by Kranar 5y ago

This should not be something that alleged without evidence. It would be trivial to take multiple phones with different battery levels and compare the prices. You could also vary the distance between the phones. Furthermore, and I could be wrong on this, I don't recall there being any API to get the battery life remaining.

aetherson 5y ago
There is an api for battery level in both iphones and androids. Evidence: life360 can tell you the battery levels of the phones of people in your circle.
jadengeller 5y ago
There are APIs for this. iOS: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/1620042-batterylevel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162... Android: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryManager https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryMa...
- angrygoat 5y ago
  I struggle to see a legitimate reason for an app to be able to access battery level. It's pretty unlikely that app is going to change behaviour to preserve battery life – that's probably better handled by the OS slowing things down. Better to simply deny the app this information.
  - jadengeller 5y ago
    Oh, I fully agree: https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s=21 https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s... (Seems like many others do too!)
    - gregoriol 5y ago
      Stop with all those permissions already: users are tired of those popups, they don't know or understand what they are asked about, and even when a pro user gets one, it's not possible to really know what will happen/break when it is allowed or denied, so this "solution" is not one, it's a bandaid and it's broken.
  - shadilay 5y ago
    My phone disables the camera flash under 15%. I don't see that as anything particularly nefarious. That said I fully support the principle of least privilege.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - prophesi 5y ago
    This is the only app I'd trust with access to my battery level https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/
  - ghaff 5y ago
    On the one hand, I generally favor allowing users/their apps to get more granular information out of their phone rather than somewhat arbitrarily deciding what they need to know (e.g. there's more GPS detail that iOS could provide but doesn't). However, in this case, the phone has a battery meter and provides its own low battery warnings. I imagine you could have more sophisticated battery use tracking apps than Apple provides but, in general, not sure why you would legitimately need this info.
  - mrob 5y ago
    If the OS slows down the app, how will you stop the app from detecting that?
  - FDSGSG 5y ago
    Whatsapp uses this API to alert call participants that one of them is about to run out of battery, this is a very useful feature IMO.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      So Whatsapp tells other participants in a call what your battery life is? By itself, I suppose that's pretty harmless. But it's really none of your business what the status of my phone is in general.
      - FDSGSG 5y ago
        Yes, it says "ghaff's phone battery level is low. Call may end soon." I think this results in a much better experience for everyone on the call.
        ghaff 5y ago
        I guess I don't really want an app doing that given it could probably tell participants other things that I don't want them to know, especially if I enabled something like location services.
        lupire 5y ago
        That's what Permissions controls are for.
        ghaff 5y ago
        Permission controls are a bandaid as someone else wrote. Let's use the location services example. So some communications app asks me for permission. Do I grant it? Well, as an unsophisticated user, maybe it wants this info to optimize the quality of my connection in some way. So maybe I ought to give it permission? Instead, maybe it's going to broadcast my coordinates to everyone else on the call which is not OK in general.
        5y ago
  - gregoriol 5y ago
    First things first: you could develop a custom interface within your app, think of games for example, to show the battery level, or simply an icon when it's low, in a specific way instead of the system's style. Then, depending on what your app does, you can act on a few things to reduce, or not, battery usage when it gets below some thresholds: reduce GPS precision, remove some animations, limit framerate, make less networking requests, ... It could be limited by the system, but it would probably not be as wise regarding to what is important in the context of one app vs another. We have numerous cases where we adapt to the battery level so the user can get the best of our apps and not empty their battery while they still need it.
  - kube-system 5y ago
    Even worse, some browsers expose this too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Status_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...
  - toast0 5y ago
    Apps can change behaviors to preserve battery life though. Things like disabling prefetching will likely reduce radio time and thus preserve battery. Delaying maintenance can help too, and that also helps reduce occurances of power failed during complex data operation and the resulting difficulties of resuming from a partial operation when the state may not have been fully persisted at any point, because filesystems and abrupt power loss don't tend to go so well together.
    - nostrademons 5y ago
      Also things like disabling complex animations, canceling high-CPU background jobs, doing more work on the server side rather than client (trading off latency for battery life), using less complex but less accurate algorithms, etc. There's a lot of reasons why an app might want to know the battery status, and most of them are for the user's benefit.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mewpmewp2 5y ago
Agreed, few anecdotal stories are not evidence of it and yeah it seems like it would be easy to test.
mcast 5y ago
iOS has battery level APIs and it doesn’t require any permission from the user (last I tried using it).
nomoreplease 5y ago
This is alleged “with evidence”. I understand you want more evidence. It’s alleged and now others can try to simulate. For what it’s worth, I was able to simulate prices ranges of $50-130 for the same ride with a few friends when we were all standing next to each other. Any new phone shows a low price first, if you search again the price goes up nearly 50%. So simulating the evidence here might be hard based on other algorithms Uber uses
- BenjiWiebe 5y ago
  So if you use rooted Android and modified the OS to always show full battery, you'd always get the best prices... And what would happen if the API call returned a larger value, say, 10,000%? :)
berdario 5y ago
> It would be trivial to ... it's not. You need help from an insider to figure out and/or force the accounts that you're using to be opted in to the same A/B tests experiments that surely are used to check the impact of a change like using battery information to determine fares.
1024core 5y ago
Like this? https://twitter.com/eightyknots/status/1428251471087169536 https://twitter.com/eightyknots/status/1428251471087169536

by Kranar 5y ago

aetherson 5y ago

There is an api for battery level in both iphones and androids. Evidence: life360 can tell you the battery levels of the phones of people in your circle.

jadengeller 5y ago

There are APIs for this. iOS: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/1620042-batterylevel https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uidevice/162... Android: https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryManager https://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/BatteryMa...

angrygoat 5y ago
I struggle to see a legitimate reason for an app to be able to access battery level. It's pretty unlikely that app is going to change behaviour to preserve battery life – that's probably better handled by the OS slowing things down. Better to simply deny the app this information.
- jadengeller 5y ago
  Oh, I fully agree: https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s=21 https://twitter.com/jadengeller/status/1427672235028795396?s... (Seems like many others do too!)
  - gregoriol 5y ago
    Stop with all those permissions already: users are tired of those popups, they don't know or understand what they are asked about, and even when a pro user gets one, it's not possible to really know what will happen/break when it is allowed or denied, so this "solution" is not one, it's a bandaid and it's broken.
- shadilay 5y ago
  My phone disables the camera flash under 15%. I don't see that as anything particularly nefarious. That said I fully support the principle of least privilege.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- prophesi 5y ago
  This is the only app I'd trust with access to my battery level https://diewithme.online/ https://diewithme.online/
- ghaff 5y ago
  On the one hand, I generally favor allowing users/their apps to get more granular information out of their phone rather than somewhat arbitrarily deciding what they need to know (e.g. there's more GPS detail that iOS could provide but doesn't). However, in this case, the phone has a battery meter and provides its own low battery warnings. I imagine you could have more sophisticated battery use tracking apps than Apple provides but, in general, not sure why you would legitimately need this info.
- mrob 5y ago
  If the OS slows down the app, how will you stop the app from detecting that?
- FDSGSG 5y ago
  Whatsapp uses this API to alert call participants that one of them is about to run out of battery, this is a very useful feature IMO.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    So Whatsapp tells other participants in a call what your battery life is? By itself, I suppose that's pretty harmless. But it's really none of your business what the status of my phone is in general.
    - FDSGSG 5y ago
      Yes, it says "ghaff's phone battery level is low. Call may end soon." I think this results in a much better experience for everyone on the call.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I guess I don't really want an app doing that given it could probably tell participants other things that I don't want them to know, especially if I enabled something like location services.
        lupire 5y ago
        That's what Permissions controls are for.
        ghaff 5y ago
        Permission controls are a bandaid as someone else wrote. Let's use the location services example. So some communications app asks me for permission. Do I grant it? Well, as an unsophisticated user, maybe it wants this info to optimize the quality of my connection in some way. So maybe I ought to give it permission? Instead, maybe it's going to broadcast my coordinates to everyone else on the call which is not OK in general.
        5y ago
- gregoriol 5y ago
  First things first: you could develop a custom interface within your app, think of games for example, to show the battery level, or simply an icon when it's low, in a specific way instead of the system's style. Then, depending on what your app does, you can act on a few things to reduce, or not, battery usage when it gets below some thresholds: reduce GPS precision, remove some animations, limit framerate, make less networking requests, ... It could be limited by the system, but it would probably not be as wise regarding to what is important in the context of one app vs another. We have numerous cases where we adapt to the battery level so the user can get the best of our apps and not empty their battery while they still need it.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Even worse, some browsers expose this too: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Status_API https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Battery_Sta...
- toast0 5y ago
  Apps can change behaviors to preserve battery life though. Things like disabling prefetching will likely reduce radio time and thus preserve battery. Delaying maintenance can help too, and that also helps reduce occurances of power failed during complex data operation and the resulting difficulties of resuming from a partial operation when the state may not have been fully persisted at any point, because filesystems and abrupt power loss don't tend to go so well together.
  - nostrademons 5y ago
    Also things like disabling complex animations, canceling high-CPU background jobs, doing more work on the server side rather than client (trading off latency for battery life), using less complex but less accurate algorithms, etc. There's a lot of reasons why an app might want to know the battery status, and most of them are for the user's benefit.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

mewpmewp2 5y ago

Agreed, few anecdotal stories are not evidence of it and yeah it seems like it would be easy to test.

mcast 5y ago

iOS has battery level APIs and it doesn’t require any permission from the user (last I tried using it).

nomoreplease 5y ago

This is alleged “with evidence”. I understand you want more evidence. It’s alleged and now others can try to simulate. For what it’s worth, I was able to simulate prices ranges of $50-130 for the same ride with a few friends when we were all standing next to each other. Any new phone shows a low price first, if you search again the price goes up nearly 50%. So simulating the evidence here might be hard based on other algorithms Uber uses

BenjiWiebe 5y ago
So if you use rooted Android and modified the OS to always show full battery, you'd always get the best prices... And what would happen if the API call returned a larger value, say, 10,000%? :)

berdario 5y ago

> It would be trivial to ... it's not. You need help from an insider to figure out and/or force the accounts that you're using to be opted in to the same A/B tests experiments that surely are used to check the impact of a change like using battery information to determine fares.

1024core 5y ago

Like this? https://twitter.com/eightyknots/status/1428251471087169536 https://twitter.com/eightyknots/status/1428251471087169536