A long-standing gap between iOS and Android
For several years, Tesla owners on iPhones have had a small but genuinely useful convenience: Live Activities. While a car is charging, the iOS lock screen shows a real-time tile with the battery percentage, the time remaining, and — at Superchargers — a running estimate of the session cost. The same system also tracks Robotaxi rides. Android owners, meanwhile, have had to unlock the phone and open the app to see any of it.
That gap now looks set to close. References and text strings for an Android equivalent have been discovered inside Tesla app version 4.58.0, which is currently rolling out.
What the code reveals
The newly surfaced strings point to a charging notification that lives on the Android lock screen and status bar, rather than buried in the pull-down notification shade. The reported behaviour mirrors the iOS feature closely:
- Current battery percentage and estimated range at a glance
- Time remaining to reach the target charge
- Estimated Supercharger fees for the session in progress
On Android the underlying mechanism is called Live Updates, a system-level feature Google introduced with Android 16 last year. Tesla appears to be building its charging notifications on top of that framework, which is the natural way to deliver a persistent, continuously refreshing tile on modern Android phones.
Not live yet — but close
An important caveat: the feature does not appear to be active in the current public build. Tesla routinely ships code for new capabilities weeks or even months before flipping the switch, either server-side or in a later app release. What makes this discovery notable is that the code looks fully formed rather than experimental, which suggests Android users may not have to wait long.
There is no official confirmation of a release date, and as with any feature found by inspecting app code, plans can change before it ships. Treat the timing as likely-soon rather than guaranteed.
Why it matters for European owners
The Tesla mobile app is the same product worldwide, so a feature added for Android arrives for European owners at the same time as everyone else — there is no regional gating on app functionality the way there is for, say, Full Self-Driving. With Android holding a larger share of the smartphone market across most of Europe than in the United States, this is a change that will reach a particularly large slice of Tesla's European customer base.
For anyone who charges at home overnight or tops up at a Supercharger on a road trip, a glanceable lock-screen tile is a meaningful quality-of-life upgrade: no unlocking, no app launch, just a quick look to see how far along the charge is and what it is costing.