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Engineer Features to Enhance Smartphone Battery Life Prediction

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates proficiency in time-series interpolation, feature engineering for predictive modeling of battery discharge, and domain-adaptation strategies for constructing training data from similar devices.

  • medium
  • Google
  • Machine Learning
  • Data Scientist

Engineer Features to Enhance Smartphone Battery Life Prediction

Company: Google

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Machine Learning

Difficulty: medium

Interview Round: Technical Screen

##### Scenario Predict how long a smartphone can keep working given its current battery level, when limited historical data is available. ##### Question Write code that uses linear interpolation to predict remaining usage time from current battery percentage. Beyond battery level, which additional variables would you engineer to improve prediction accuracy and why? If no historical data from identical phones exists, describe a feature-matching strategy to generate a usable training set. ##### Hints Think temperature, screen-on time, app mix, battery health; consider similarity search on handset specs.

Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in time-series interpolation, feature engineering for predictive modeling of battery discharge, and domain-adaptation strategies for constructing training data from similar devices.

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Google
Jul 12, 2025, 6:59 PM
Data Scientist
Technical Screen
Machine Learning
101
0

Battery Life Prediction with Sparse History

Problem

You are given sparse discharge traces that record battery percentage over elapsed time for prior usage sessions. Predict the remaining usage time for a phone at its current battery percentage using linear interpolation. Then:

  1. Provide code for the interpolation-based predictor (single trace and multi-trace aggregation).
  2. Propose additional variables (features) you would engineer to improve prediction accuracy and explain why.
  3. If no historical data from identical phones exists, describe a feature-matching strategy to build a usable training set from similar devices and contexts.

Assumptions

  • Each discharge trace is a time-ordered series of (elapsed_time, battery_percent) during continuous usage (no charging within a trace).
  • Battery percent decreases monotonically with elapsed time; minor noise can be smoothed or handled by sorting/deduping.
  • If a trace does not reach 0%, we may extrapolate the last segment linearly to estimate time at 0%.

Solution

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