Java date diff in minutes between 2 Date objects

 Quick solution:

public static long getDifferenceInMinutes(Date from, Date now) {
	long diff = now.getTime() - from.getTime();
	return diff / (60 * 1000);
}

Explanation based on question Date objects.
The difference is 15 min so:
15 min * 60 sec * 1000 ms = 900 000 ms
Each minute has 60 seconds.
Each seconds has 1000 milliseconds.

So the diff = 900 000 ms
In order to get time in minutes we need to divide it by
60 sec * 1000 milliseconds = 60 000 milliseconds - (60 * 1000) in our code.

900 000 / (60 * 1000) = 15 minutes

Also there should be easier way without explicit conversion with:
TimeUnit.MINUTES.convert, but it's nice to know what's under the hood.

Full example

This example is based on the data from question. Both dates are the same and the difference is 15 min.

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.ZoneOffset;
import java.util.Date;

public class DiffTimeExample {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        //                                   year  m  day  hour  min  sec nano
        LocalDateTime of1 = LocalDateTime.of(2020, 1, 20,  16,   20,  0,  0);
        LocalDateTime of2 = LocalDateTime.of(2020, 1, 20,  16,   35,  0,  0);

        Date from = Date.from(of1.toInstant(ZoneOffset.UTC));
        Date now  = Date.from(of2.toInstant(ZoneOffset.UTC));

        System.out.println(getDifferenceInMinutes(from, now)); // 15
        // the difference between those 2 Date objects is 15 min

        // Explanation:
        // 15 min * 60 sec * 1000 ms = 900 000 ms
    }

    public static long getDifferenceInMinutes(Date from, Date now) {
        long diff = now.getTime() - from.getTime();
        return diff / (60 * 1000);
    }
}

Example 2

Second example shows that we can replace Date.from... with Date object. First Date from can be Date from database from entity, second can be current now.

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.ZoneOffset;
import java.util.Date;

public class DiffTimeExample2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDateTime of1 = LocalDateTime.of(2020, 1, 20,  16,   20,  0,  0);
        Date from = Date.from(of1.toInstant(ZoneOffset.UTC)); // from db
        Date now  = new Date(); // current time

        System.out.println(getDifferenceInMinutes(from, now));
    }

    public static long getDifferenceInMinutes(Date from, Date now) {
        long diff = now.getTime() - from.getTime();
        return diff / (60 * 1000);
    }
}