Google's new Android L operating system brings plenty of noticeable improvements on the aesthetic front, but what does it do for your battery life? Let's take a look at Project Volta and ART, two components that look like they're going to give Android L devices more longevity.

Google is aiming to improve battery life for devices running Android L through a series of optimizations known as "Project Volta," one in a series of Google "Projects" in each Android version. In KitKat, Project Svelte helped Android run on only 512MB RAM, while in Jelly Bean, Project Butter got animations running smoothly at 60fps. With Volta, Google aims to fix a number of battery-draining issues, including the fact that waking up a device for one second burns as much battery power as standby mode does in two minutes.

The reason for this is there's a lot of waking up to do, including unnecessary tasks that involve network connectivity or app resuscitation. In light of the issue, Google has included a "JobScheduler" API that bundles up unimportant tasks for later. Developers will also be able to take advantage of the features, asking their apps to wait until the device is plugged in to perform routine maintenance.

Android L also includes a Battery Historian tracker that monitors battery usage and just exactly what is using it the most. For users, this should greatly help extend battery life, if not give them an interesting glance at what's eating up their handset's or tablet's juice.

Does it all work? According to ArsTechnica, it seems to, partly helped out by ART, which brings us to our next point...

ART is the new runtime in Android L. It's not entirely new (ART is an option in KitKat), but it will be replacing Dalvik, the previous Android runtime, completely in Android L.

The difference between the two is simple: Dalvik is real-time whereas ART is proactive. This means that Dalvik compiles code on the fly. ART, on the other hand, pre-compiles code so it doesn't have to when the user executes commands. This is also why it takes longer to install ART — the virtual machine is getting all of its ducks in a row. The very nature of ART allows it to drain the battery less in real time since it doesn't have to perform the same functions a Dalvik app does.

"This shift opens up a large amount of optimizations which were not possible in the past; because code is optimized and compiled only once, it is worth to optimize it really well that one time," reads an AnandTech look at ART. "Google claims that it now is able to achieve higher level optimizations over the whole of an applications code-base, as the compiler has an overview of the totality of the code, as opposed to the current JIT compiler which only does optimizations in local/method chunks."

"The implications to battery life are also significant — since there is no more interpretation or JIT-work to be done during the runtime of an app, that results in direct savings of CPU cycles, and thus, power consumption."

Android L is currently in a developer preview phase, so expect more efficiency in future iterations.

For more stories like this, follow us on Twitter!