How WHOOP decreased excessive partial wake lock sessions by over 90%

Posted by Breana Tate, Developer Relations Engineer, Mayank Saini, Senior Android Engineer, Sarthak Jagetia, Senior Android Engineer and Manmeet Tuteja, Android Engineer IIBuilding an Android app for a wearable means the real work starts when the screen turns off. WHOOP helps members understand how their body responds to training, recovery, sleep, and stress, and for the many WHOOP members on Android, reliable background syncing and connectivity are what make those insights possible.Earlier this year, Google Play released a new metric in Android vitals: Excessive partial wake locks. This metric measures the percentage of user sessions where cumulative, non-exempt wake lock usage exceeds 2 hours in a 24-hour period. The aim of this metric is to help you identify and address possible sources of battery drain, which is crucial for delivering a great user experience.Beginning March 1, 2026, apps that continue to not meet the quality threshold may be excluded from Google Play discovery surfaces. A warning may also be placed on the Google Play Store listing, indicating the app might use more battery than expected.According to Mayank Saini, Senior Android Engineer at WHOOP, this “presented the team with an opportunity to raise the bar on Android efficiency,” after Android vitals flagged the app’s excessive partial wake lock % as 15%—which exceeded the recommended 5% threshold.The team viewed the Android vitals metric as a clear signal that their background work was holding the CPU awake longer than necessary. Resolving this would allow them to continue to deliver a great user experience while simultaneously decreasing wasted background time and maintaining reliable and timely Bluetooth connectivity and syncing.Identifying the issueTo figure out where to get started, the team...

Original source: https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2026/03/how-whoop-decreased-excessive-partial.html
Publisher: Android Developers Blog