Is there a universal way for a circuit to detect battery life and report it to the stock OS? It must be noted that I know very little about programming, and don't even own an Android device, however I am considering building one(Learning whatever it takes.)

My question is simply, if I were to build an android computer, using a development board such as the Odroid C1, is there a standard way, using any battery, that I could make a circuit to detect battery level and connect it to the board using IO pins, and report the level to the OS in a way that doesn't need a custom driver to be developed, so that the stock Android OS can display the battery level.  

The purpose of this is so that if I were to replicate many of these computers, I could simply install the stock Android OS and it automatically detects the battery level, so that I would not have to install a custom driver on every single one.

Everything I have asked may not make any sense, as I am not very familiar with android at all. I'm asking under the assumption that Android works similarly to a typical Linux OS.
Short answer: I think not. You'll need to create/install the appropriate battery driver if you want to run it from battery (and be effective).

In Linux power management is done via APM/ACPI which is handled at the BIOS layer. So when you buy a motherboard/dev board the expectation is you'll be plugged in. If you go into any mobile shop, you'll see a variety of batteries even from the same manufacturer. As batteries pack a great deal of energy, every one of those batteries could either have a microchip which communicates the handset informing it about battery charge state or some read-only storage which contains the appropriate necessary parameters so that charging can be done in safe manner.

I'm going to point you to the slide deck where I found regarding Android Power Management:
http://www.slideshare.net/jerrinsg/android-power-management

While I'm not sure if you can immediately understand everything in it - it should give you some scope as to the complexity involved.