When Google first announced Doze for Android Marshmallow, it was touted as a bid to significantly boost battery life by putting the device into a very low power-consumption mode whenever it was stationary and the screen was turned off. This meant that leaving your phone on a table overnight or even for a full day would only sip away a very small amount of your battery. Unfortunately, since it only kicks in for a fully stationary device, Doze in Marshmallow doesn't get triggered if, say, you leave your phone in your pocket instead of placing it on the table, meaning that you won't see any of those battery savings.

Thankfully, that's about to change: starting with Android N, Doze will now activate whenever the device's screen is turned off, even if it's not laying on a still surface. This will undoubtedly be great news for sea captains and people who live in areas that are especially prone to earthquakes, but it's also great for normal people who keep their phones in their pockets for the larger part of the day.

In addition to an improved Doze mode, Google is also continuing to invest in Project Svelte, their effort to make Android much more memory efficient so that it can run smoothly on an even broader range of devices. By making background work more efficient, Android N should also consume less resources and gain even more battery savings too.

We'll be trying out the newly released N developer builds and paying close attention to how effective this updated version of Doze is in practice.