Keep up on your power with Battery Level for Windows Phone 8

Here's an app that should excite some of you new Windows Phone 8 owners out there: Battery Level for WP8 by Alex Golesh. The first of its kind, as far as we know, the app allows you to constantly keep abreast of your battery life on your WP8 device with a simple Live Tile.

Just pin the app to your Start screen and choose one of three sizes (small, medium and doublewide) to suit your needs. The doublewide will even display the charging state (discharge or charging) in addition to the battery icon and percentage left. Oh and the app can also display a battery icon and percentage on the Lock screen. Yup, just head to Settings and choose it as one of your five options and you'll be good to go.

The app is completely free and besides a simple spelling error within the app, it's pretty slick. Even if you're not into this, you should be excited to see the kinds of things developers will be releasing soon to the Windows Phone Store for Microsoft's latest OS. We should see some really creative apps over the next few months.

Pick up Battery Level for WP8 here in the Store.

Daniel Rubino is the Editor-in-chief of Windows Central, head reviewer, podcast co-host, and analyst. He has been here covering Microsoft since 2007 when this site was called WMExperts (and later Windows Phone Central). His interests include Windows, Microsoft Surface, laptops, next-gen computing, and for some reason, watches. Before all this tech stuff, he worked on a Ph.D. in linguistics and ran the projectors at movie theaters, which has done absolutely nothing for his career.

110 Comments

Nice!
I want my yellow Lumia!
I'm waiting for mine, it comes Thursday. -_-
me too, but I'm starting to wish I ordered the white one, but it could just be sometime of subliminal advertising going on with WP Central.
???
Haha +1 Its all because of Dan's white one.
And I want a fuckin' wireless charger! Here in germany its not possible to buy any accessories, no chargers, no docks, nothin... dunno why...
At least you'll get your device soon (if you already don't have one). :( Croatia will get Lumia 920 in February, most likely. And T-Mobile Croatia is a complete biatch! Do you know what they've told me? "Hello, Kristijan, blah blah blah, next year, Q1, that's not too long of a wait, is it?" Idiots, I hate them!
oh yeah thats crap... but Q1 maybe the surface phone will be released and maybe its better than the lumia... next time nokia should release phone and accessories at the same time. Its curios, in germany you can buy the lumia since the first week of november, but no charger, and in the usa some ppl got a charger but no phone lol...but microsoft also failed so hard when they delivered the touch covers to the folks but no surface tablet m)
Buy it in Italy, not so far from you :)
They aren't exactly all over the place here either. I haven't been able to find any accessories for the 920 anywhere in MA save a couple speck cases which, while I appreciate the effort, I have no real interest in.
Was looking for something like this but gave up. Now it's finally here! This will be my first app I download when I get my WP8. Wouldn't mind paying for it
If you want to pay for it, I can make a paid version. Any suggestions for paid version extra features?
I would pay if it could provide some indication of the amount of power consumed by individual apps.
Would be great if it calculated remaining battery
Additional colors, type of cell shown, solid fill vs bars, unit change. Live tile shows time since last charge. Avg time between charges. Lot of creative options. How about power saver options etc
Would be nice to show something about how long your last charge was vs how much got charged. aside from that the other ideas sounded good. But back to the article comment, hehe, I like this and as well plan and DLing as one of my first WP8 apps
No reason... NOT to get it =P. Haha awesome though! Finally, I can think about what my battery life will be on my wp8!
IT'S MY LUMIA AND I NEED IT NOW!!!!!!
LMAO! I know that feeling. Ordered mine early morning on the 7th. At&t are still processing the order. Haven't even shipped it out yet no clue when it arrives :/
Well I didn't wanna pre-order because I was thinking that the AT&T store would have them sooner... But living here in Wyoming I should have pre-ordered it.
+1 for the reference.
Omg I hate those commercials.
Just installed it. Love it since I kept going to the battery saver to see what % of battery I had left.
What's great is that it's probably the only one in WP8 Store. If you use Android and want something like this you'll need to decide among dozens of choices. Love how simple this looks and very practical.
Battery Tile is another one and there are more.
Two spelling mistakes in the app, not one. "Carging" and "Settins"
And we care why? If the app works, who cares? Better to have a functional app with a grammatical mistake than not have an app at all.
I'd rather have something that works AND looks professional, and not having typos is part of looking professional. And the article specifically mentioned that there is a single typo, but there are two. But if you're happy with applications that look bad, that's on you.
Did you pay for it? It affects your life in some way? No, don't like it, don't install it and stop bitching
I agree with jhoff80. It's nice to see some sense of professional pride in an app (among other things). Misspelled words in apps are pretty annoying, and far too rampant in apps and sites these days. Glad WPCentral is one of those sites that has a professional feel to it.
Typos in the UI also means typos in the code. There will be bugs - get ready.
Jeez girls, if you're gonna argue, let's do this right. Let me go get some jello and a midget referee.
I seriously lol'd
Grammar mistakes are nn important, but mean a poor app testing...
Is it just me or is anyone else with the 920 experiencing horrible battery life compared to the 900?
Same here. Not sure what's up with it.
Glad to see not just me 10 hours I was at 20 percent checking maybe 5 mins an hour
Yeah, mine is insanely terrible. Hoping this gets fixed soon... May need to keep my 900 with me to swap SIMs.
Mine is great. Sucks for you.
yeah same here too... i disabled email push and let it now check every 15mins that helped a very little bit i think... but battery life is incredibly short even if you are doing nothing with the phone :( any chance that they can fix that?
Nothing here, 920 battery life is good
No battery problem here. Been using my 920 frequently all day for 8 hours so far and I'm at 85% battery left. Using LTE and Wi-Fi hotspots all day too.
That is not believable.
Whether you believe it or not, it's true. Down to 80% now after 9 hours since I took it off charge.
Pics or it didn't happen. Gotta
Love the screenshot feature
I am getting awesome battery life as well but I've cycled my battery about 3-4 times now. Been stuck in a hospital, with little time to sleep and have had it on playing with it constantly.
It's just you playing with it more since it's new. ;)
I hope so, or perhaps it gets better with time, I remember being underwhelmed with the 900's battery when I got it. Speaking of which, does anyone know how to enable edge on the 920? I got into the diagnostics menu but it's different than the 900.
I've noticed subpar battery performance. Especially when I first turned on my new phone it was very hot and battery drained quickly. Its gotten better but sometimes warms up.
Same here
Works great. And nice lock screen integration.
Hey guys, any info on when T Mobile will be getting there Windows 8 phones?
Supposedly this coming Wednesday.
This app drained my 920 battery quick, just throwing my 2 cents in.
lol ironic
For a second there I was expecting this to say "Lumia exclusive"
This are the kind of things wp8 should've have from the gecko...this one of the reasons im not jumping on wp8,there's rumors that lumia 930 will be skinnier,lighter,bigger screen with more color options..if i wasn't a l900 owner i will definitely jump on 920 but the fact i became a beta tester with the 900 i will definitely refused to be one again..besides wp8 apps have a long way to go... Get the bumblebee colorway...
SURFACE PHONE ist quarter 2013..
oh no's I'll see me ending up selling the lumia and change to that surface phone lol... I love my lumia very much, but since the first time I used win8 preview I totally mutated to a microsoft fanboy xD
Rumors like that always coming around. Doubtful to see another flagship for 6 months
"from the gecko" LOL!
Glad I'm not the only person who noticed that O_O

trying to decide if it's some kind of postmodern joke, or genuine confusion. :D
Hahaha :P Either a mis-hearing of "get go" or auto-correct perhaps
Better U wait for wp45 in 2035, Lumia990 will have transparent body, 3000x2000 screen projector and will be installable under your eye.
Please c'mon.If U wait for next model, U will never buy anything :)
LMAO!
This seems like a great app. I hate touching the top all the time on my 920
Does this work in real-time, or every 30 minutes?
yes i want to know that too.. cuz in the aricle he says "..the app allows you to constantly keep abreast of your battery life..".. can anyone confirm.. they havent shipped my lumia yet :( prob will come on wednesday!
It appears too be real time. While reading through these comments, I started with 74 and I went to look at the pinned tile and it was at 73 right before I typed this! :)
Ok I went to check again after playing a game and viewing CNN....it must update on the 30 min rule because it was 67 after I CLICKED on it. :/
It's definitely not real time. You have to click to update (or maybe 30 minutes).
Every 30 minutes or so. There is no way to mak real-time updates for 3rd part apps. Also, even if it possible, whould you like to have battery status app which helps to discharge the battery? ;)
There seems to me to be a couple to a few percentage points off. Not a big deal. Battery life so far doesn't seem to be that great. I unplugged it at noon and its 5pm and I'm at 32% with moderate use.
Wow! There seems to be a huge variance here! I just posted above that I'm down to 80% after 9 hours. I took my 920 off charge at 9am. It's 6pm now and I've been checking e-mail, messages and forums all day!
Lucky. I took mine off the charger at 9:30a and at 7p I was at 45%. Not doing too many intensive things. Have email on push, checked the ESPN app for football scores every twenty minutes, and sent texts out every once in awhile.
Interesting. I'm down to 70% now after 10 hours. Don't know why my 920 is doing so well today. I'm at home on my wi-fi and I have LTE service. I'm checking the phone every 10-15 mins, checking e-mail, forums etc. The 920 is definitely lasting longer than my 900 did.
About the same as me. Love this thing!
Windows Phone background tasks on only for 30 minute runs, that is if not much else is going on. Since this developer isn't a first party dev with access to inaccessible APIs, then it prob will run every 30-60 min. Unless there is something in win phone 8 that I am unaware of!
This explains the strange numbers I am seeing. Its not updating quickly at all.
Nice and useful app it seems, but do we really need a double-wide tile?
Need? No. But with these new tiles its probably just easiest to give us every option possible.
Hope this comes to Windows 7.8
This doesn't seem to update accurately. My phone seems go stay on one number for a while and then drop down a whole dozen or so percent on refresh. Still, better than nothing.
Cus its a background task that updates every 30+ min!
Looks decent, but "Battery Saver' built in app does the same thing withou the live tile.
What we need is a battery app that gives you the ability to see how much battery you drained within a certain time period and which apps were being used during that time period. Then we could really tell which apps drain the most battery, etc.
The whole point of this is the live tile...
yeah omg, my battery life went down the toilet after the first charge.....hmm that is so weird. Hope I don't have to exchange it.
That guy beat me! I'm testing some apps like that and the first one I tought of making was a battery indicator.

I guess that's what makes competition si I will have to bring my A game with my first batch of apps :)
Add a graph like in the Homebrew Battery Status app and you have a winner! You are already capturing the battery percentage every 30 minutes. So save it in a database and add it to a graph. Simple.
I think this app drains battery. I deleted it
Could you run some bench marks to back that up?
Yeah, kept checking it every couple minutes to see how fast the battery was draining. It was dropping a couple of percent each time I checked. Uninstalled and been texting for the last five minutes and its dropped less than when I was checking the app.
It shouldn't. All it's doing is recording the current battery level every 30 minutes. No call out to the Web, Probably takes all of 0.2 seconds to complete the task and update the tile. The homebrew Battery Status app checks every 10 minutes vs. every 30, and after multiple tests, I determined it used less than 2% of my battery in a 16-18 hour day.

Remove it for now if you like, but don't write it off. Probably something else snatching up your juice. Oh, and unlike a clock, if you focus all your attention on your battery level it will move/drop faster. Why, because your screen is on. The biggest single drain on your battery.
To all you new 920 owners. Congratulations. Enjoy your new phones, but be prepared to keep them on charge often for the first few days. If I had one right now, I know I would have a hard time turning it off.
So to the battery life issue everyone saying they had good battery life seem to be on WiFi anyone on att getting good battery life off WiFi?
I can confirm I haven't connected to any WiFi yet on it, and my battery life so far is horrid
Perfect, I use it on the lock screen!
I'm hardly waiting HTC to deliver the third Windows Phone 8 by HTC (aka Zenith)...
I thought @tomwarren showed that battery level could be pinned from settings. Is this true?
Anyone having an issue with this app only displaying 99% while OS says 100% ?
left the phone on charge all night & its fully charged according to settings page info, but lock screen & live tile only say 99
Yes. 99 is maximum possible number of such tile type. Next version will bring new "special" icon for this.
Great news...I look forward to it!
Daniel was right. I am going to go crazy over this.
I remember when I first got my 900, I thought the battery life was horrid but after using it for a week it just got better and better. Then it was great all.of a sudden. Does anyone think it's the battery being conditioned as you use it?
Damn, I wish it was available for my Lumia 900,... :-(
This is a cool concept, but it actually drained my battery more than it did help. Also, it was slow to update and the lock screen % didn't update in real time (didn't have it pinned).
O/S limits live tile updates to every 30 minutes, thats as 'real time' as you are going to get with any app
Lets test this out on my Lumia 920!!!
I bougt white lumia from AT&T online received on Monday, I fully charge it on Tuesday morning today after day and half of average use (stock quotes, 2 email clients and gmaps running on background) I still have 40% of battery left. This phone outperform my iphone 4s in battery life. With iphone I usualy had 40% after day of use with simular apps running.
Any chance something like this will be available for my windows 8 laptop?

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