While there are many things to love about Android 12, we were bummed to find out that the screen-on time stat disappeared in Beta 1, and it hasn't returned in Beta 2 either. We were almost ready to accept that Google decided to scrap this useful statistical insight into our phones' battery lives, but thankfully, it looks like screen-on time is set to return in a future Android 12 update.
If you're unfamiliar with the term, so-called "screen-on time" or SoT is a common (but highly anecdotal) metric for measuring and comparing battery life. After all, standby time doesn't really matter for most of us past a few days; it's time spent while being actively used that is important. Ergo, Screen-on time: It's time the phone spent with its screen powered on. And though this is a highly subjective metric that can vary drastically depending on how you use a phone, it's a basic number most people have come to understand, even if you have to take any values that folk like I provide in a review with a grain of salt.
