I just don't understand what legitimate use a web page has for knowing the device battery level. This feels very much like information harvesting for the sake of information harvesting.
- Warn the user to save their data when the battery level is too low (or automatically save) etc.
(Of course, there's is 0.1% of webapps/websites who'd need this).
Worst case, api should return 3 states: Draining, Charging, Charging & Full
I do agree that battery levels should not be available to fingerprint. And brave browser blocks the posted site from reading my battery level. So I'm not really sure how the research, which is also from brave, could co-exist with their browser implementation.
Better to just have optimized applications.
Don't install an App, just visit the website. The website would act like a App. even offline.
> The benign uses of the API were primarily from two third parties: YouTube, where the API was used in performance metrics for embedded videos, and Boomerang, a performance measurement library
Google of all companies has simulators (probably down to the cycle level on their own phones) and will know exactly how much processing power they're using. There's no reason for them to know the battery level for performance metrics. I fail to see it as benign, even if the stated reason is notionally benign.
> I fail to see it as benign
Maybe not entirely benign (which is why it was removed in Webkit and Firefox, and nerfed in Chrome itself).
For a performance measurement library, the use is obvious.
You fine with YT downloading all of an hours-long video on mobile and draining your data plan, even if you're paused after a few seconds? Or not being able to jump forward until whole MPEG is downloaded? That's what "standard" HTML video player does.
Also tap to move 10 sec forward is nice, isn't it?