> I don't know Android well enough to say.

You can easily fake the battery status on Android: https://stanfy.com/blog/android-shell-part-1-mocking-battery...

    > It's not that hard of a problem.

You and the grandparent are proposing that Uber somehow use information provided by the user's phone to waive the cancellation fee, when the user is in control of their phone and has every economic incentive to game the system.

Even if you could get this to work it's not at all obvious that it's desirable. Right now the system is simple, you order a car and for some reason the app turns off, you get charged a cancellation fee. That's a hard problem to solve.

What if you have one Uber and two customers who'd like to order it, one with 3% battery and one with 97%? Should the risk of sending the car to the user with 3% battery purely be assumed by Uber?