Feature added to 5G Galaxy Z Fold 3, Galaxy Z Flip 3 saves their batteries from an early demise

Samsung's new foldable models, the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3, both ship with the One UI 3.1.1interface on top of Android 11. This is a minor update over One UI 3.1 but one of the additional features is designed to give your phone's battery a nice long life. Called Protect battery, it is found on most Samsung Galaxy tablets and works by preventing the battery on your Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3 from charging beyond 85%.

Studies have shown that in the long-term, constantly charging your phone's lithium-ion battery to 100% puts more stress on the battery leading to a shorter lifespan. The Protect battery feature will make sure that the batteries powering your new foldable live to a ripe old age.

Protect battery has the same goal as the Optimized Battery Charging feature on the iPhone. But Apple goes about this a different way. Using on-device machine learning, the iPhone learns your daily charging routine and in certain situations, it will stop charging at 80%. Knowing that you normally take your device off the charger at a certain time, the iPhone uses an algorithm to compute when it should start charging again so that the phone can be fully charged by the time you unplug it from the outlet.

But let's return to Samsung's Protect battery feature. It has been used, as we noted, on Samsung's Galaxy tablets and now on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 and Galaxy Z Flip 3. Surprisingly, it was not found on the One UI 3.1.1 update for the Galaxy S21 series. It also isn't clear whether Samsung will continue offering the feature only to its foldables and tablets or whether it will eventually offer Protect battery to its Galaxy smartphones.