Google is testing new icons for various status bar elements like WiFi, mobile data, airplane mode, and battery level.
We previously spotted the new designs for the WiFi, mobile data, and airplane mode icons last year, but the battery level icon has been significantly revamped since we last saw it.
Instead of having a white background at all times, the new battery level icon we spotted in Android 16 has a vivid green background when the device is charging and a red background when it’s low on power.
Google doesn’t change up Android’s user interface all that often, much to the dismay of vocal power users online. The upcoming Android 16 update, for example, doesn’t look all that different from last year’s release or the previous year’s. However, we know that Google is hard at work revamping Android’s UI, as we’ve seen extensive evidence of various UI changes in the past few months. One area that we thought Google had abandoned was the status bar, but in the most recent beta release, we discovered that the company has renewed work on revamping the status bar icons, including a new battery icon that’s more colorful.
Last year, we discovered that Google was preparing a revamped status bar with new icons and haptics. We found some new icons for various status bar elements like the Wi-Fi signal strength, mobile data signal strength, airplane mode, and battery level. Considering that Google hasn’t tweaked the basic design of these icons since Android 5.0 Lollipop’s release in 2014, we thought the changes were pretty noteworthy. Some people weren’t fans of the new icons, though, so we were curious if Google planned to change them up before release.