Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update

https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/google-pixel-4as-old-firmware-is-gone-trapping-users-on-the-buggy-battery-update

by bmaupin • 1 year ago

315 362 1 year ago

hengheng• 1 year ago

I'm typing this on a 3a XL that just refuses to die. Google's valuation of that device in the Store is the same, but they haven't switched it off. Guess I got lucky.

rjbwork• 1 year ago

Am I the only one that had the immediate thought of "this seems intentional" when they read that they're offering the credit for a newer pixel?

justinsaccount• 1 year ago

Google has acknowledged the mess and offered compensation: a free battery replacement, $50 cash, or $100 credit toward a new Pixel.

alt2272• 1 year ago

Yet when people have applied for this credit they either get no response, or told it will take several weeks (which is useless when they have just screwed your old phone)

mottalli2• 1 year ago

I applied for the $100 credit more than a week ago but it is at Google's discretion, and I've never heard back from them. Even if they offer the credit, I'm not interested anymore and I'll never use a Google Pixel again.

Zak7• 1 year ago

If a discount on a new Pixel was the only option, I'd suspect that. $50 cash is around 2/3 what a Pixel 4a goes for on Ebay.

letwhile• 1 year ago

No, this is obviously an illegal scam.

wonger_2• 1 year ago

Most believe that they're trying to prevent safety issues with overheating batteries. This update prevents the battery from being charged too much or too little.

ComputerGuru• 1 year ago

Draining the battery from 100% to 0% in under an hour (as other commenters have mentioned) is the opposite of this, as that will necessarily dump a lot of heat.

patall3• 1 year ago

If it is just that, they should have written so. Because what they wrote was that some devices may be affected from this optimization. Nothing general. And if this is really an issue, all those that now change to Lineage or Graphe will be an even bigger issue soon. Because in that case, Google knew, and did not say so.

* Send from my now charging 4a

mottalli2• 1 year ago

I received the email from Google notifying me of this "battery performance update" for my Pixel 4A which actually drains the battery faster, so it left me scratching my head wondering what a "performance update" is for Google.

After the update, my battery was depleted at an alarming rate. I applied for the $100 voucher but I've never heard back from Google. So I decided to bite the bullet and moved to iPhone instead. Apple might not be the best, but this was the last straw for me.

gertlex5• 1 year ago

I'm a weirdo who carries two pixel 4as. I'm also waiting for a response regarding the $100 voucher on one of my phones... My other one I took in for the free battery replacement, and that's doing OK.

But yeah, I was planning to go for a Pixel 9 or 9a (when that's been out for a while), but this forcing of the hand by google is absolute BS, and the alternatives are unsatisfactory.

segasaturn• 1 year ago

I recently ordered a Fairphone 5, imported from the UK. Stock Android experience, replaceable battery, SD card slot, unlocked bootloader and modding is encouraged. Its basically what the Pixel (Nexus) line was originally supposed to be.

alt2272• 1 year ago

You dont remember batterygate then?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batterygate

zer0x4d3• 1 year ago

Lol this was the most blown out of proportion "gate" ever and a nothing burger really. The issue wasn't what Apple did, as it is a very common practice in the industry and I bet almost every other manufacturer did it too. The issue was that they didn't notify the user.

jeromegv• 1 year ago

It was the opposite, slowing down the processor to preserve the battery (when a battery was quite old).

tocs3• 1 year ago

Would grapheneos (https://grapheneos.org/) help with this? I am using a pixel 4a as a "house phone" so it is plugged in all the time but I wonder if I should upgrade.

gertlex5• 1 year ago

In the sense that it was a perfectly good phone, and still works with e.g. various bank apps or whatever... and I got tired of jail-break/customization stuff of smart devices about a decade ago... the extra work to wipe everything and explore a new world of things that might turn out to be broken isn't what I'd consider a reasonable option. :/

gausswho• 1 year ago

Things have come a long way. The GrapheneOS installation in particular is very straightforward. And most banks work just fine as apps, and if not via their website.

sifar2• 1 year ago

I use GrapheneOS on my pixel 4a ever since I got it a few years ago. Installation is straightforward and it is a best of both worlds - you can install and run android apps from the playstore in a sandbox.

badmintonbaseba• 1 year ago

Since this is a major release, the Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 have not been ported to Android 14 QPR2 as part our initial release. We need to determine whether it makes sense to move these end-of-life devices to Android 14 QPR2 or keep them on a legacy extended support release branch based on the last Android 14 QPR1 release.

https://grapheneos.org/releases#2024030600

sifar2• 1 year ago

I own a pixel 4a with grapheneOS - I received a couple of os updates in the last week, haven't run into this issue yet. Will see.

nelblu• 1 year ago

I use pixel 3 with https://calyxos.org/ as a home phone to play music, record videos, pictures etc. Calyxos is still providing extended support for 4a, but microG doesn't work as well compared to sandboxed google play services on grapheneos (which i use on my 7a). So if google services are not too important go ahead with calyxos.

unethical_ban• 1 year ago

Why don't they build a rollback "update" if they wiped the old firmware?

izzydata• 1 year ago

First they have to wait for the maximum number of people to buy new phones.

gertlex5• 1 year ago

They as in google?

This happened in a few stages:

Rollout of the new release (Jan 8 or so; I got it maybe Jan 16?)

Folks showed you could get the old update (I don't recall specifics) and block the OTA URLs (developer settings I think?) to prevent re-update.

Google decided to make it harder to get the old firmware.

I couldn't be arsed to wipe my phone, so am just living with the new shitty future for now.

zimbatm• 1 year ago

This needs more coverage. Perfectly good phones are getting thrown out because of a software update.

deng6• 1 year ago

Google ended security updates for the Pixel 4a in August 2023, so running this as your daily driver was already problematic. Fortunately, LineageOS officially supports the 4a, and v22 (aka Android 15) was just released for it.

red_trumpet• 1 year ago

That point is so weird: Why offer a "performance update" 1.5 years after the end of security updates?

alistairSH• 1 year ago

Isn't that just 3 years after release? Is that normal for Google phones? Yikes.

ndriscoll3• 1 year ago

This attitude (and the word "problematic") is so tiring. What is the actual problem with running it as your daily driver? What specific vulnerability are you actually concerned about? Unless there's something like an arbitrary code execution bug in one of the networking/radio stacks, "there aren't updates" is a statement with approximately zero useful information.

dont__panic• 1 year ago

There's been a lot of activity on Reddit and Android tech news websites. /r/Pixel4a has been absolutely busy with activity lately, lots of people asking for help.

Decent summary post here: https://www.lambdalatitudinarians.org/techblog/2025/01/09/th...

toast04• 1 year ago

My experience was kid dropped my old phone on holiday, we tried to remember why my spouse's old phone got replaced, and remembered she had a pixel 4a and the battery life had gotten really poor.

There was some news at the time that the 4a would be getting a 'battery performance update' and that it would result in some users getting a warning about their battery performing poorly and some would be eligible for $50 or a repair.

When I eventually got around to prepping the phone for the kid, lo and behold, the update was ready, I did it, and the battery was bad, and it linked me to the battery performance campaign page...

Which needed the IMEI, then said I could get $50, a $100 coupon or bring it in for repair, and there was a shop reasonably near me. I brought it in and they swapped the battery in about 2 hours with no extra drama.

I don't know why you would throw your phone out from this update... Although I wouldn't be surprised if you had already thrown it out because the battery performance was an issue before the update too.

quercusa• 1 year ago

My wife was affected by this. When she applied for the $100 credit, she was told it could take up to three weeks to get the credit form.

netghost2• 1 year ago

Which is just awesome when your current phone is broken.

I posted about it and they suggested that I keep a backup phone available at all times, thanks folks.

deng6• 1 year ago

You can revert this if you unlock your bootloader:

https://xdaforums.com/t/undo-the-january-2025-update-without...

(EDIT: Just to be clear, and which is also mentioned in that post: unlocking the bootloader will reset the device. If your device is already unlocked though, you will be able to keep the data.)

Of course, I would just advise to switch to LineageOS directly, since Google has stopped providing security updates for the Pixel 4a already in August 2023. I've run LineageOS for years on the Pixel 4a and it has worked pretty much perfectly for me:

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/sunfish/

Android 15 (LineageOS 22) was just released for it.

ianbooker• 1 year ago

How is the photo quality? I love the pictures from the old 12MP sensor + Googles software, but I understand this is not in Lineage?

Zak7• 1 year ago

The Pixel camera app is available from the Play Store, and there are third-party ports of Gcam to other devices that offer extra configuration options. https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/

deng6• 1 year ago

Well, they are good enough for me, but to be honest, I'm not particularly picky... As said in a parallel post, you can get GCam in APK form (I run LineageOS without GApps) but I hear it's a bit trial&error to find one that works and I haven't bothered.

j1elo2• 1 year ago

I'd also be interested to know if a Google Camera app installed post-facto to LineageOS is compatible with the remote control & viewfinder of the Pixel Watch.

nunez2• 1 year ago

Loved the photos from my 4a when I had it many years ago.

Videos, on the other hand...

josephcsible• 1 year ago

Be careful about doing that. Google announced that starting tomorrow, they're going to be remotely wiping all Pixel 4a's that aren't running the new update: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pixel4a/comments/1id6zw8/attention_...

throw-the-towel2• 1 year ago

How the hell is this even legal?

rjmorris3• 1 year ago

Google didn't announce anything. That's a message from a customer support rep to a single individual.

matja• 1 year ago

Are these not the old images? : https://developers.google.com/android/images#bramble

joombaga• 1 year ago

Right page, wrong anchor. They removed all but the latest firmware for the "sunfish", i.e. the non-5g Pixel 4a.

https://developers.google.com/android/images#sunfish

jameshilliard• 1 year ago

Yeah, it's archived at least here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20231113025141if_/https://dl.goo...

Sateeshm• 1 year ago

Best phone I've ever used. Still going great after 4 years. Don't know how long it will last. There doesn't seem to be anything available with similar form factor.

timerol• 1 year ago

What makes the form factor better than others in the series? I'm curious since I've only owned a Pixel 3a and a Pixel 6a

Zak7• 1 year ago

No current phone from any manufacturer that's reasonably desirable is as small as the 4a, and few of any size have a headphone jack.

ausaus• 1 year ago

Replaced my 4a with a similar sized Moto Edge 30 Neo. Overall, much better hardware quality. I had a warranty replacement for the 4a due to cracks around the headphone jack, also happened to the replacement but that wasn't replaced.

The Moto was half the price of the 4a and is still receiving updates.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 year ago

.. and appears to be basically unavailable at this time.

wonger_2• 1 year ago

It's frustrating. My phone went from 100% to 0% in under an hour. I could not rely on it for a typical workday. Thankfully my job does not require my personal phone, and thankfully the update happened on the weekend. Imagine seeing this Monday morning before work. Who has time to fiddle with firmware? And who has time to set up a new phone in the middle of a workweek, especially if you're switching to a non-Pixel phone?

The small credit does not cover the cost of inconvenience.

stephaner• 1 year ago

Same problem here (a few hours of battery life and it's very slow to charge now). This update makes no sense at all, excepted if you want to force your users to buy a new phone.

For me, it should be a RED flag on the Pixel lineup and on the confidence in Google.

I filled https://www.stopobsolescence.org/.

b112• 1 year ago

Just bought a pixel 9 pro fold. I am now returning it. Tricks like this mean I won't be a customer.

sacckey• 1 year ago

This reminded me of when my Nexus 5X went into a boot loop.

starkparker• 1 year ago

This reminds me of when Google's last update to the 2012 wi-fi Nexus 7 botched its TRIM implementation, which made everyone think its shitty eMMC was to blame. I held onto mine sort of as a joke for more than a decade.

I only just found out a month ago that the Android update caused its performance to tank, then put LineageOS on it, and was shocked to find that 13-year-old tablet was not only still usable but actually kinda good.

NeveHanter• 1 year ago

Yeah, mine did the same and later died completely, and only now I found that the LG was refunding the full price of phones or fixing them for free if they had this specific HW issue...

fumeux_fume• 1 year ago

My spouse had to buy a new phone because of this issue. Neither of us got any notification about the battery issue. Even if we did, what Google is offering here isn't great. We tried to get the battery replaced, but was told that the process could likely break the screen and jack up the cost to nearly the original purchase price. Sending the phone in for repair also isn't a good solution because she needs it for auth at work. What a mess.

MaximilianEmel• 1 year ago

pkaye• 1 year ago

My spouse and I have the same situation but strangely but my phone seems much better while my spouse's phone drains very quickly. We just took it in for a battery replacement at the Google store and should be picking it up soon.

j1elo2• 1 year ago

I'm (we all are) constantly reminded to update our phones to latest available updates, but sh*t like this is what teaches users to instead disable and ignore updates indefinitely, under the premise of "if it works don't touch it" (addendum: "... because most probably an update will break it")

And here I am, ignoring updates on my Pixel 6a since October 2024 (there were reports of crashes or bricking, what a surprise) and planning to keep doing that for the foreseeable future.

Sucks having to choose between a potentially (even likely, seeing the trend) broken device or an unsecured one. Pick your poison.

OsrsNeedsf2P• 1 year ago

Google 4a user here. They pushed an update while I was on a ski trip in Korea - I updated an hour before getting on my bus and.. the application launcher started crashing on unlock. I couldn't open any apps.

Thankfully, I was able to get into the settings and switch to Lawnchair without a working "desktop UI", but without a second application launcher I would have been totally screwed. I checked the Play Store afterwards and saw hundreds of people with the same issue.

On Linux I can choose which "security" updates to install, and only install those. Why can't Windows and Android provide such a feature?

TonyTrapp• 1 year ago

Stuff like this is why I keep printing entrance tickets and the like. I don't want to end up in a situation where I have to trust software that is known to have new bugs every months to get into a place without any sort of backup.

kllrnohj5• 1 year ago

Why can't Windows and Android provide such a feature?

Windows does.

Android "can't" because the OS is a partition image with libraries not intended to be updated piecemeal, not a collection of loosely related external projects like Linux is.

Suppafly3• 1 year ago

Google 4a user here. They pushed an update while I was on a ski trip in Korea - I updated an hour before getting on my bus and.. the application launcher started crashing on unlock. I couldn't open any apps.

I had that happen like a year ago while I was getting ready to go to a concert in another state. Luckily I was able to call my wife have her login to my gmail and forward my digital tickets to someone else in my party.

eldaisfish2• 1 year ago

Nonsense like this is why I personally will never buy a google hardware product ever again.

It is also why it is so difficult to recommend an android phone because of google being an advert company first.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 1 year ago

I think security updates are mostly BS designed to make users voluntarily give up control. Almost nobody would ever be affected by these CVEs but the ceding of control affects everyone.

hysan4• 1 year ago

I was visiting my parents for the holidays and came across this exact mindset. I usually push them to update for security, but I learned that they stopped doing that this year. Apparently some update broke/removed/changed an accessibility feature on their phone in a way that I couldn’t figure out how to revert. My mom had updated her phone first so only she was affected. My dad now refuses to update his phone and both of them have completely stopped updating for fear that something else will “break”. I can’t really blame them, but it does worry me and now I’m trying to think of what I can do to secure their devices if they’re not going to update.

coldpie2• 1 year ago

Hmm. Assuming Android, install Firefox with uBlock Origin, and hide the Chrome and App Store launchers someplace deep?

ryandrake• 1 year ago

The software industry has known how to do this for a very long time, but some companies refuse to do it. You maintain a "sustaining" branch just for security and other legitimately urgent fixes, and a main branch for everything else. Users are nudged more strongly to apply the sustaining fixes and the main update branch should be optional.

We have immensely powerful version control and branching at developers' disposal, much better than at any past time I can think of. Yet, most companies insist on having a single release that increments, and users must take everything or nothing whenever they update.

Phone/OS manufacturers are actually better than most, and both major operating systems do provide security updates in parallel with major (feature) updates, but only for a very short amount of time.

xethos• 1 year ago

Frankly, even the scarequotes around break feel misplaced. Your Mom can't use the device like she wants to. An accessibility feature is gone to the point you can't get it back. That feels pretty broken to me.

behnamoh• 1 year ago

The way Google botched the Android 11 update to my Pixel 4a was the nail in the coffin in convincing me to go back to iPhone. I don't want to upgrade my Android and see a totally different UI every single time. I want consistency and I don't want Google to mess with things that already work. This is very childish on their side and just shows that Google engineers and managers don't use their own products.

ycombinatrix4• 1 year ago

I don't want Google to mess with things that already work.

Unfortunately, that is exactly how Google rewards performance internally

spencerflem3• 1 year ago

It's crazy- I feel like outside of videogames, and sometimes programming languages, almost every single "update" makes things worse.

They shuffle the UI around, or put in more ads, or recently- add some new AI feature. Genuinely can't remember the last OS or App update I've been happy about.

Makes me sad to think of all the developers working long hours just to make their users upset.

StressedDev4• 1 year ago

If you ignore updates, you will get hacked. If you think a bad update is a problem, wait until you have to clean up a hack. It will cost more money and take more time than buying a new phone.

My advice is to buy phones from reputable manufacturers. I have had an iPhone for over 10 years and I have been very happy. The work well, last, and the performance is always good. My current goal is to keep my current phone 7 years. I will update it when Apple stops supplying updates.

fsflover3• 1 year ago

My advice is to buy phones from reputable manufacturers.

You mean those slowing down your phone on updates [0] and not providing critical security updates in time [1] while not allowing existing more secure alternative browsers [2]?

The true alternative is phones running mainline Linux. Sent from my Librem 5.

[0] https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-pay...

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42780816

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/context?id=42859836

floydnoel• 1 year ago

I wonder how long it will take for users to stop trusting anything from G..

lnauta• 1 year ago

My pixel 4a lasted about 3 hours before the update, now its about an hour. Even with the discount in the store, it was cheaper to get the pixel 8a and some cash from a local vendor. The ticket to get the reimbursement went surprisingly fast, still waiting on money though.

Yesterday I got my new 8a, installed grapheneos and it works very well! So far no massive issues. When I tried this on the 4a some years ago, netflix complained about general certificate stuff and casting was broken, microG et al was barely holding on. Now, no problems at all!

zitterbewegung• 1 year ago

I've been running GraphiteOS on my Pixel 4a (it is a backup phone) and obviously it doesn't have the battery update but I can attest that it works great with it.

netghost2• 1 year ago

This destroyed my phone, and their appeasement process was terrible too. There was no way for me to find out whether there was a supported repair shop nearby, the $50 cash was apparently through a very dodgy company, and then $100 google store credit didn't disclose that it's "upon review within three weeks" until after you irrevocably chose the option.

The whole thing is ridiculous and poorly handled. Sadly, if my phone had just cracked or failed to turn on, I'd probably have upgraded happily and moved on with my life. As it is, now I feel like something was taken from me. So it goes

chasil14• 1 year ago

Here is a map of the stores:

https://images.ctfassets.net/d9ybqgejqp0w/7hP2z3Oyn8xH4TvFJt...

You can schedule an appointment here:

https://asurion.com

A retired coworker got a 4a off eBay two years ago, and it's eligible for a free battery replacement.

s4i• 1 year ago

I was a Nexus/Pixel user for 10+ years. Majority of the phones I owned during that time had some quirks or issues. The worst examples were Nexus 5X and Pixel 5 – both just suddenly froze one day, shut down, and never turned back on again. After that Pixel 5 surprise I grudgingly switched to iPhone 12 mini.

I still think Google’s Android UI is the best one out there for me, and I despise a lot in the iPhone UX (such as the keyboard) but I just need a phone that works and I can get repaired or replaced easily if I need to. At least in Finland, Google’s customer service has been abysmal over the years.

malfist• 1 year ago

Ars reporting says the $50 cash option's vendor charges a $30 annual fee if you don't close your account after getting paid.

chabad360• 1 year ago

Speaking as a Pixel 4a customer with this update: I received the update, and like everyone else, my phone battery started draining incredibly quickly. However, after getting the free battery replacement, my phone's battery has returned to draining as normal (and on the plus side, has somewhat renewed the life of this phone).

kpeeters• 1 year ago

Ditto. Replaced battery, phone is as new.

snovymgodym• 1 year ago

I'm glad it worked out for you.

The problem is, the Pixel 4a is not designed to have the battery be swapped and it's common to break screens and other parts of the phone in the process. You can look up what's involved and it's no surprise that this is the case.

It's basically a nice little case of hardware and software anti-consumer policies working together to break people's devices and force them to consume more.

Without legislation nothing will change.

snailmailstare2• 1 year ago

I think the EU is fixing it for the pixel 11a and up.

rwoerz• 1 year ago

I wonder why these "forced updates till kaputt" do not fall under (malicious) property damage. It is not just Google: My Amazon Kindle gets less and less responsive the last years without any noteworthy functional improvements. Same for the Firestick.

wobfan• 1 year ago

There's a nice video about this from Louis Rossmann [1] that talks about this in detail and tries to find some reasons for it, and he seems to suggest that the update was never about improving the battery life as in getting more usage per charge out of the battery, but improving it as in limiting the battery full charge capacity to minimize potential problems with it, because he (and others) assume that they identified bad batches and are trying to fix potential problems with them by limiting it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xboo6sV-cJU

NotPractical4• 1 year ago

If you prefer reading over watching (thanks @MaximilianEmel): https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Pixel_4a_Battery_Perform...

tonymet• 1 year ago

He's a great advocate for right-to-repair . we have a crisis that few people are concerned about.

donclark2• 1 year ago

I resolved this problem on my Pixel 4a by installing graphene OS. YMMV.

klaff2• 1 year ago

Did you install GrapheneOS before or after the problematic update from google?

donclark2• 1 year ago

After the update from Google, my 4a did not seem to hold a charge like it did before. I read the reviews/risks and thought that my easiest options were to either roll-back the OS update, or finally give GrapheneOS a try.

sega_sai• 1 year ago

I've updated a couple of weeks ago, but I already had a battery replaced last year, so I didn't notice anything untoward with the charge. I did however start to have a vertical green line on the screen that appears for a while, then disappears for a while. (it is possible the line is just a coincidence and an unrelated screen defect).

rjmorris3• 1 year ago

You were lucky. Lots of people who recently had their battery replaced (before the update was announced) were affected by this.

nunez2• 1 year ago

wow. i was actually considering getting a 4a as the lynchpin for my move back to Android (as no small Android phones exist anymore).

anyway, iPhone 13 Mini until it dissolves into dust.

OliveMate2• 1 year ago

Hi, (soon to be ex) Pixel 4a user here. Regardless of why this update has happened, the way Google have went about this update is sketchy at best, and deceitful at worst. To be plain: this phone has been EOL for 1½ years now. This update has appeared out of the blue and specifically decimates the battery + charging capabilities.

My most charitable view is that Google have found a major fault with the Pixel 4a battery and want to mitigate a repeat of the Galaxy Note 7 without saying it outright and causing a panic.

My least charitable view (and immediate reaction) is that they're purposely ruining a viable budget phone to make more sales.

Either of these are terrible. At no point has Google came out and stated -why- they're pushing this update in the first place. And as someone who hasn't updated I'd really like to know if my phone presents an immediate threat (and I'm sure Governments and airlines would also like to know) before I remotely consider an update that'll practically destroy my device.

On top of this, within a day of being notified about this update, Google drastically raised the price of new Pixels on their store. Again if I'm charitable it could just be automatic global market price updates, but that goes out the window when Google must have prepared this update, FAQs, support plans, etc, then released it just before said price updates. The $100 discount recourse doesn't go far when the 8a jumped from £379 to £499. It's hard not to feel suspicious about it.

While I'm here, I did briefly write about my experiences with the 4a, though I'm far from a competent tech writer: https://callmeo.live/blog/ode-to-the-pixel-4a/

Suppafly3• 1 year ago

My least charitable view (and immediate reaction) is that they're purposely ruining a viable budget phone to make more sales.

My wife was using a pixel 4 until last year and upgraded to a 7, I took her old phone and switched it over to my info and used it for like 2 days before it got a random update and refused to ever work again. Her 7 just got an update a couple of days ago and the battery went dead and it refused to boot until it'd been plugged in for an hour and then would only boot into recovery mode before finally returning to normal. I think google just has something really screwed up with their update process.

Rastonbury• 1 year ago

Google pixel software is horrendous, shocking honestly for a company with Google capabilities. Bought pixel 6 at launch, could not take calls after an update (the speaker would just emit a high pitch tone 15s after connecting, I had to ask people to call me using messaging apps for a while, lucky I did not rely on my phone for work) and wifi would switch off by itself randomly and needed to restart phone to get it working again. Had to update to beta build to get these fixed. For my model and others, it seems like every update or 2 there are populations that hit the forums with battery drain issues. I will never buy a pixel ever again.

kristopolous4• 1 year ago

I am still on a 4a.

I really hate how in subsequent generations, they faithfully cloned Apple's design decisions of removing ports and making the device gigantic.

"For customers who are dissatisfied with iphones,

Our product is a slightly different iphone-like device."

I mean come on now, what the hell...

About twice a decade google makes a good phone and the others are just iphone knockoffs

silon42• 1 year ago

Also the OS is copying Apple, making it worse.

lynndotpy3• 1 year ago

I feel this a lot. Android's used to differentiate themselves from iPhones by having useful technical features at a competitive price. I used to be die-hard pro-Android, but now I can find very few reasons to buy one.

Now the Android UI is sparse and wobbly, Androids lost call recording, sideloading is limited, and they raised their prices to cost as much as iPhones.

Meanwhile, iPhones got call recording, they opened up NFC (a bit) and they support CalDAV and CardDAV and SMB natively in its built-in apps. The "control center" on iOS is customizable, to the point they do what Android's quick tiles did before 2020 or so.

It's very frustrating-- I wish they still made Androids like they used to :(

m4632• 1 year ago

I think this is something apple doesn't realize.

They used to have a really good human factors/ui team. I remember Bruce Tognazzini and reading his blog.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Tognazzini

https://www.asktog.com/

I think I noticed around ios 7 things were getting bad. buttons didn't look like buttons, on-screen controls started being hidden, and form trumped function. Then like you said, ports disappeared and to me "do the wrong thing correctly" started winning.

but the worst thing is that apple sets an example. The same "simplify for sales, but not usability" technique has happened to countless other products in many industries. all laptops have elegant looking keys that have no curve to fit and center your fingers. Tesla cars have a pleasing-looking design, but when you drive them, you can't lean on the touchscreen to hit targets, you don't have drive selection or turn signal stalks to help you get into a parking space easily, and "elegant simplicity" is "cost cutting for the peons".

sigh.

nullc3• 1 year ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotelling%27s_law

brailsafe4• 1 year ago

Did the 4a have anything other than an aux port? I definitely still miss it, having moved onto a Pixel 7, but on the other hand I've also mostly stopped listening to anything with headphones from it. In surprising fashion, the fact that my screen is still intact and I feel pretty comfortable watching videos in the shower has proven more valuable.

chasil14• 1 year ago

Unless your Pixel 4a is from Verizon (locked), keep it.

Unlock the bootloader, then install LineageOS, MindTheGapps, and Magisk.

Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%.

That should solve your problems, and turn the updates back on. I don't think there is a way to make Google Pay work in this configuration, which is a drawback.

I can put all the URLs here if you ask.

Edit:

https://lineageos.org/

[I did not remember that Lineage hosts gapps images]

https://wiki.lineageos.org/gapps/

[IIRC, the APK is renamed to a ZIP and flashed with recovery, then name it back and install the app]

https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk/releases/tag/v28.1

https://magiskmanager.com/

https://github.com/VR-25/acc/releases/tag/v2023.10.16

gruez2• 1 year ago

Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%.

That will reduce future wear, but won't suddenly make the battery better. If anything it'll make the battery even worse, at least in the short term.

beretguy2• 1 year ago

I can put all the URLs here if you ask.

I'm not who you replied to but can you please do? I've been wanting to make a LineageOS device for a while but was being cheap (and it wasn't high enough priority). But maybe now there will be a lot of cheap Pixel 4a on eBay in the near future and I'll go for it.

conaclos• 1 year ago

Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%.

If we install LineageOS, should we worry about Google's firmware update? Then why bother with all these steps?

burningChrome• 1 year ago

>> Unlock the bootloader, then install LineageOS, MindTheGapps, and Magisk.

Unless you have researched this and are comfortable doing these things, this is not something that's easy to do. I bricked my OnePlus Nord100 not once, but TWICE trying to install Ubuntu Touch.

It happened because the Nord100 shipped with a more current Android version (11.xx) and Ubuntu can only be installed over two very specific versions (10.xx) on the Nord. I bricked it once thinking it could be installed over the 11 version. Then I had to figure out how to reflash the phone back to the 10 version, then run the UBports installer.

I was lucky because I bought the Nord100 for like $50 on ebay so it wasn't a big deal if I wasn't able to unbrick the phone, but if you do this to a more expensive phone, the consequences are a lot more expensive.

I love Lineage OS and have it running on a Pixel 4XL, but my experience flashing and re-flashing the phone several times, and all the work I went into just to get UT running on that phone, really dampened my enthusiasm to ever do this again.

sharpshadow• 1 year ago

That defeats the whole point of a Pixel, the camera app.

wanderingmind• 1 year ago

Why go all through that pain when graphene OS gives you a straightforward install?

aquasync• 1 year ago

Thanks for the info! My pixel has already applied the update unfortunately - any ideas if switching to lineageos is still helpful in that case?

They’re not offering the free battery replacement in Aus otherwise I’d do that - hard to be sure that getting a new battery in a local repair shop wouldn’t be similarly affected by the new limits (presumably some sort of blacklist on serial numbers?).

drowsspa• 1 year ago

And then you can't access bank or government apps anymore... I used to root my phone, it's not worth it anymore

kees99• 1 year ago

Problem with pretty much every modern battery-powered device is that battery is flogged to near death at every charge. From @marcan's mastodon post, Pixel 4a's battery is charged to 4.45V:

  qcom,max-voltage-uv = <0x43e6d0>;

This is completely insane, and it's a small miracle that this phone didn't follow Note7's fate.

As for charge limiting... limit at 80% is an okay workaround (certainly better than no limit at all!), but it's far from perfect. Namely, with this approach, charge controller chip doesn't know cut-off is coming, and will shove several amperes into the battery until last second, thus overshooting safe voltage level. This wears the battery (less so than with no limit, but still more than necessary).

Battery charging limiting should be done by voltage: this way, controller chip knows where to stop, so it makes soft taper-off at the end of charge cycle, by gradually nudging current down to stay within voltage envelope.

Charging profile could be observed from a rooted adb console:

  grep NOW <$(find /sys/devices/platform \
  | grep battery/uevent$ | head -1)

(depending on phone model and firmware, some tweaking might be required to find/grep to get the right battery status file)

tlamponi• 1 year ago

  > https://magiskmanager.com/

WARNING: this is not the official site for Magisk [0], keep to the actual GitHub hosted repo and builds [1].

[0] https://www.xda-developers.com/psa-magiskmanager-com-not-off...

[1] https://github.com/topjohnwu/Magisk

KORraN4• 1 year ago

Great comment, even though I'm concerned whether my Pixel is a ticking bomb now. The update has been downloaded to my device, but before installing it, I decided to check Reddit and found out the battery issues. Since then, I'm dismissing the update prompt, praying to not miss-click.

The article got it wrong - even before the update has been published, Google already sent e-mail to registered users with a note that the upcoming update may reduce battery life and offered either battery replacement or money: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15701861 But the results people post are way beyond anyone expected.

ChoGGi• 1 year ago

The Dev options have a setting to not apply updates on reboot. I'm hoping that'll work if I forget.

BoorishBears2• 1 year ago

Google products have consistently been timebombs. I recall the Nexus 7 which had storage that would grind to an unusable halt after a few years.

They don't have the culture or the integration to properly support old devices the way Apple can. Everyone vilified Apple for CPU governers that extended device life by underclocking instead of browning out... this is the kind of behavior that would have deserved the backlash they got.

But the bar is so low with Google and Android devices in general that the outrage will be limited.

QuantumGood• 1 year ago

The repair places have been overwhelmed; I've had three apppoints to replace my wife's 4a battery that have been cancelled because they ran out of stock due to huge unexpected demand.

lupire• 1 year ago

There is no way Google is making software update plans based on the revenue opportunity for breaking phones that are already 2 years past end of life.

The numbers just don't make sense.

Users who love 5-year-old phones can easily get a cheap used phone, which are in abundant supply.

ikiris2• 1 year ago

Your incredulity is misplaced. They’ve admitted in depositions this is a basis for decision making like this.

mathstuf• 1 year ago

At no point has Google came out and stated -why- they're pushing this update in the first place.

The cynic in me recommends that anyone contributing to Google (or really any big tech company) projects to use "bug fixes and performance improvements" or "What's new:" (with an empty body) as commit messages and refuse to update them until we get useful changelogs for app updates.

computehyper2• 1 year ago

Hello I'm not sure if you can help but I made a post on here as well as a topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42871613

schroeding• 1 year ago

I also own a 4a - the amount of hoops Google performed to explicitly prevent downgrades for (only) the 4a by removing all old Android images (and only for it) leads me to fear your charitable view is true. Only the tinyest sliver of customers would ever try to downgrade / reflash their phone, it IMO doesn't make sense to do this if they just want to increase sales a bit. And then again, why only for the 4a.

Which, should it be true, would make the lack of explanation from Google horrible and asinine. If (and this is a big if, it's all speculation, because Google doesn't open their mouth) there is a hardware fault with the battery, I would very much like to know outright as a customer, no matter the PR damage for Google.

1vuio0pswjnm7• 1 year ago

"Either of these are terrible. At no point has Google came out and stated -why- they're pushing this update in the first place."

As I can still remember the days of software before "updates", I am still baffled by the always unsolicited "advice" amounting to "always update" without even considering what's in an "update". This "advice" is everywhere. Software quality control is at all-time lows I guess. Then came "automatic updates", decreasing the chance of computer user discretion even more, effectively removing user choice, i.e., case-by-case decision-making.

Perhaps some computer users, the rare ones who do not routinely follow unsolicited "advice" blindly, might respond to the question of updating with something like, "What choice do I have?" That there is no meaningful choice, or perception thereof, in deciding whether to install an "update" is not a coincidence, methinks.

Maybe updating is a gamble. There are winners and losers. On several occasions, I have won by not updating, i.e., blindly installing more code from so-called "tech" company without being to peruse the code. Other times I have gotten lost by updating. It seems that quite often the "updates" include code that serves me no benefit and in fact reduces the computer's utility to me. Meanwhile, it might increase utility for others or for the so-called "tech" company that collects data and sells ad services. One size does not fit all. Sometimes the losses can outweigh the gains, if any.

Hopefully there is a lawsuit filed over this Pixel 4a "update". Through discovery we may be able to learn what happened.

pxmpxm• 1 year ago

always update

There's seems to be an army of aspiring CVE bros cargo-culting this idiocy; they pretend to live in a parallel universe where state-sponsored intelligence groups are spending millions to get at the cat photos on their phones.

Obviously the premise that you should just blindly update a device where you have no recourse if the update breaks workflow/functionality/user experience (android, ios) or tries to monetize the hardware you actually own (msft) is prima facie stupid.

hnburnsy2• 1 year ago

Hi, (soon to be ex) Pixel 4a user here. Regardless of why this update has happened, the way Google have went about this update is sketchy at best, and deceitful at worst. To be plain: this phone has been EOL for 1½ years now. This update has appeared out of the blue and specifically decimates the battery + charging capabilities.

See the Fitbit Charge 5 issue from 2023 and it just happened again with the Sense and Versa...

https://www.androidauthority.com/fitbit-sense-versa-3-batter...

Gee101• 1 year ago

My Pixel 4a battery started swelling up recently. I assume it's a Note 7 problem they are trying to avoid. Google did pay me $50 for my phone which is not too bad.

kllrnohj5• 1 year ago

My least charitable view (and immediate reaction) is that they're purposely ruining a viable budget phone to make more sales.

Given the legal & regulatory trouble Apple got in and is currently in depending on jurisdiction for doing this, it seems highly unlikely Google would have picked now to attempt the same thing. Especially since it's literally a single device, and even the sibling 4a 5g didn't get the same treatment.

The silence is inexcusable, though.

scarface_7417• 1 year ago

Apple did not “do this”. Apple ole didn’t ruin a perfectly good phone with an update. The throttling they did on phones with old batteries kept them from shutting off completely.

pxoe• 1 year ago

If they were trying to "purposely ruin a viable budget phone", what about the rest of now obsolete and just as budget Pixels? (like 3a, 4a 5g, 5a, etc.)

ptspts• 1 year ago

Is it possible to decline this update on the UI of an internet-connected Pixel 4a?

Mine has already updated, and I'm wondering if I had a chance to say no.

KORraN4• 1 year ago

I'm getting prompts to restart in order to update. So far (~2 weeks), I was able to dismiss them.

AcerbicZero• 1 year ago

As soon as they dropped the Nexus line, things went downhill fast. IMO the nexus 5 was peak android.

clircle• 1 year ago

Concur, switched to iPhone around this time, as Android just started to feel like a knock off iOS rather than an alternative.

nixosbestos• 1 year ago

I'm sorry, but what? iOS and Android couldn't be more different, and if anything iOS has converged toward Android. Meanwhile my friend that likes to act smug about iOS has all but given up the gambit. My Pixel 9 Pro takes far better pictures, gets same or better battery life, and can crazy things like upload or download photos to Lightroom without needing to manually keep the screen on. Or you know, background tasks in general.

toast04• 1 year ago

The nexus 5x had a major bootlooping issue.

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

I'm trying to figure out what the actual latest update is doing regarding the battery. I found an update to the kernel binary but it doesn't seem the source has been updated.

Can I submit a GPL request to Google to get the kernel source?

https://github.com/bmaupin/pixel4a-battery-research

kam• 1 year ago

I also looked around AOSP and found the commit for the battery alert icon [1], but no kernel source.

[1] https://android.googlesource.com/platform/frameworks/base/+/...

jeroenhd2• 1 year ago

If you own a device, you're entitled to a copy of all GPL software that came with it, including some build tools. However, if the diminished battery performance comes from some kind of firmware update for an embedded microcontroller, you're probably out of luck there, unless that controller also runs GPL software.

It's possible the changes you're looking for are already listed on one of these repos: https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/sunfish-sepol... https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/sunfish-kerne... https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/sunfish/

(sunfish is the codename for the Pixel 4a)

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

I looked through all the sunfish repos first, which is how I found this: https://android.googlesource.com/device/google/sunfish-kerne...

But apparently sunfish-kernel only contains binaries.

Given there's an update to Image.lz4, that seems there's an update to the kernel. I also compared the binary to the previous version and found some new strings possibly related to battery charging profile.

Next I checked out the source using Google's documentation but the latest commit is here: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+/refs/heads/and...

But maybe I'm looking in the wrong place.

NotPractical4• 1 year ago

If you're reversing this: I was curious if Google determines if your device is "affected" using the phone's serial, or the battery's serial. I've seen reports that people who replace the battery manually outside of the program still experience diminished performance. But of course that could just be because they replaced their defective battery with another defective battery.

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

I'm going through the kernel with Ghidra but not very good at it and not having much luck.

I do have an idea about what it's checking to determine if a battery is affected, but I don't have enough data yet to know if it's just a coincidence.

PaulDavisThe1st2• 1 year ago

Marcan is on it:

https://fosstodon.org/@marcan@treehouse.systems/113914172891...

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

Wow, that is exactly what I was hoping to do, but I wasn't able to figure out more than 1 or 2 of those steps. Thanks!

tomerbd• 1 year ago

no more unlimited photos upload for you.

delfinom• 1 year ago

Hopefully people opted out of the binding arbitration for the phone so they can join a class action, right?

Lol, I opt out on every new pixel phone

debo_• 1 year ago

If it helps, I ran my 3a on Pixel Experience up until ~6 months ago, and it worked great. It's like having the exact same phone with extended upgrades.

I gave it away to someone who needed it more and upgraded to an 8a. My mission with this phone is to use it for 10 years.

Shekelphile• 1 year ago

I am surprised there are even any functioning 4a's left to begin with. Google intentionally designs major components of these phones to break within a year or two of normal use, like using extremely cheap NAND that fails commonly, bricking the phone.

nickpinkston• 1 year ago

I've had software bugs / issues with various Pixel phones (original, 4, 6, now 7) for years, and I'm unsure why I'm such a masochist.

Anyone else have this problem? Is it well known?

framtidsljus• 1 year ago

Another Pixel 4A user here. Still haven't installed the marvelous update. But it'll be installed the next time I reboot. No way to stop it.

I have never had any battery issues. Now Google wants to effectively brick my beloved phone? And giving me $50 for the trouble. What. The. F. is going on.

I've requested the $50, shall be paid out within 18 days they say.

So sad. I really like (soon liked, probably) my 4a.

zargon• 1 year ago

Does/will GrapheneOS ship this new firmware? My Pixel 4a needed a new battery. I ordered the kit from ifixit, but was worried about possibly breaking the screen during replacement and being without a phone. So I bought a used iPhone XS to try out Apple-land. My plan was to put GrapheneOS on the Pixel 4a and decide eventually if my next phone would be a new Pixel with GrapheneOS or a new iPhone.

Since then this whole debacle has unfolded. GrapheneOS's installation instructions say that it updates the phone's firmware to the latest early in the installation process. GrapheneOS's releases page has a "2025012701" release for Pixel 4a. But the release notes don't have any mention of Pixel 4a since version 2023100300. I'm trying to figure out if GrapheneOS has actually updated their Pixel 4a image since then, and whether it would install the battery breaking firmware.

yread• 1 year ago

I was in the market and wanted to go for Pixel8 pro. This charade turned me completely anti-google and I'm not even considering it even though camera is the most important attribute of the phone for me.

jerome-jh• 1 year ago

Contrary to was is said in the article, the 50$/100$ compensation was announced shortly before the update. It is no compensation for the mess they caused.

I still have not restarted my phone since the update. But my wife has and her phone does not hold charge for a day, compared to 48h before the update. Battery percentage gone completely unreliable. She's only doing slow charges since then in an attempt to have battery management chip somehow recover. Hard to see what they tried to "fix"

Halan• 1 year ago

I am done suggesting pixel phones to my family elders. Refurbished iPhones is the way to go

roesel• 1 year ago

The pixel 4a battery life saga was what made both me and my entire extended family never even consider buying a pixel phone again (and move to Samsung or iPhones).

Google denied the issues existed forever, then shipped a fix that somehow made them even worse, and made the phone unusable for years. I hope we were not the only ones.

isaacremuant2• 1 year ago

Samsung with Nova Launcher is pretty usable. It has its annoying quirks but probably closer to your old experience than a full iPhone switch.

zer0x4d3• 1 year ago

Has there been a single Pixel with no boot loop, battery, reception, or otherwise some other major issue?

What is going on at the Pixel team??? They have probably single handedly cost Google millions of dollars

computehyper2• 1 year ago

I'm semi homeless and the forced Pixel 4a battery update made my phone unusable and I'm in a state of tears. What can I do? Reddit deleted my post (I am hoping it's not because of Google employees)

I don't want to get too long into what happened in my life, but I had a Pixel 4a and everything was running great. Even when I was on the streets homeless I was able to charge it. I'm still struggling in and out, and apparently there was an update that came automatically to my phone. I checked and talked to live support in the library and they said it was just a battery update and it will last a bit less. That wasn't a big deal I thought but now the update came and my battery went from many hours to maybe half an hour now and doesn't charge at all or very slowly. I have interviews and some other small jobs that I have to do and just hard life right now and I do not have any money for this. I am a bit emotional so I asked while tearing up to Google support why they did this and I can't afford this my life is in shambles but they didn't help me. Even with the battery replacement I do not live near any local shops and mailing it in would not be possible for my situation. I bought this phone when my life was good and I only like this one and want to use this one.

All my stuff is on here and I don't know too much about phones so I just want this to work. I don't have money to fix this. I feel like the phone will die any second. What can be done? I didn't know they would do this. My life just keeps getting worse... I always feared my phone getting stolen on the streets but never thought Google would steal my phone.

What can I do? I don't have much minutes or data and can't afford it, is there a number I can call Google directly? I don't want to play with the phone and do anything weird my life is on it and can't back it up.

Thank you all.

aucisson_masque2• 1 year ago

Get a cheap flip phone to receive call and make them.

When you got enough money, buy a phone. Not Google's one obviously. And transfer everything from the pixel to the new.

Keep the pixel for the incoming lawsuit.

tripdout• 1 year ago

Has anyone gone through that firmware update and seen what changed? What exactly are they doing to improve battery performance/reliability?

I would guess just down clocking the CPU or something.

ChrisArchitect• 1 year ago

I'm semi homeless and Google's forced update on the Pixel 4a ruined it

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42871613

nickjj• 1 year ago

I have a Google Pixel 4a and planned to use the phone until it physically no longer worked. I loved it, especially with its wired headphone jack and small size.

It has worked for 3+ years and held a charge for 2-3 days easily until the other week when they pushed the battery patch. Now it dies in a few hours with light usage.

I asked Google support on what will happen if I get a battery replacement and it's still draining fast. They won't answer.

Google reps at a repair center said a battery replacement is unlikely to fix the drain issue since the drain behavior is attached to an OS update you can't opt out of.

This is really frustrating to be ignored by Google after they essentially bricked a fully working device that I paid for.

This is a type of move where I'm tempted to de-Google myself over this, including deleting my YouTube channel with 20k subs that I've been regularly posting to for almost a decade.

My whole business (selling courses and contract work) depends on SEO from Google and YouTube and I'm close to saying fuck it and destroying all of that out of principle on how poorly they are treating folks over this issue. I haven't made that decision yet but it's close to be honest. Close enough that I'm openly posting this message.

tristor2• 1 year ago

Stuff like this is part of why I stick with iPhone. The Pixel 4A stopped receiving security updates just 3 years after release, and rather than being direct about what battery changes were made and providing reasonable pathways for people to replace batteries, this happens.

Apple does stupid and shady stuff too, it is certainly not perfect, but Google has always had a cultural attitude permeating their organization since the beginning that wanted to avoid doing any sort of real customer support, and preferenced boxing customers into something kafkaesque over doing the right thing.

For all the dumb shit Apple has done, I can walk into any Apple Store and talk to a person and get my problem resolved for a nominal fee (if any), their devices get 5+ years of security updates (usually closer to 7 years) and I upgrade before that ends anyway for other reasons (typically about every 4-5 years), in the interim my device "just works". I've effectively never had a problem with an Apple device since I've switched. I was an early adopter of Android, made my own customer ROMs and shared them on XDA Developers Forum, and otherwise was big on Android, but it became really clear to me very quickly that the app ecosystem is a mess (security and otherwise), the core OS has huge privacy and functional design issues, and Google as a steward and a first-party handset manufacturer is not the company you want to do business with.

This really sucks for everyone impacted, and I understand why many many people (including my wife) choose to stay on Android, but you should really give some thought to this. What do you /actually/ do every day with your phone, and what would better serve you? As someone who wants to spend as little time on my phone as possible, and I use it as a tool, that needs to actually work when I need it, and I travel often, iPhone is clearly a more reliable choice.

hayd• 1 year ago

I just wish they had a smaller offering than the SE. (But seemingly this is the case for everyone nowadays.)

nyarlathotep_• 1 year ago

Hanging on to my 12 mini for that reason.

izacus2• 1 year ago

Apple literally did the exact same thing with limiting battery limits on iPhone 6 and got sued for it. C'mon.

tristor2• 1 year ago

No, they did not. They slowed down the CPU in order to reduce battery consumption via throttling, which changed the performance of the iPhone device to compensate for a bad battery. It's not the same thing, and yes they did get sued for it and lost, and yes it's an example of what I mean by Apple having done shady things also.

brailsafe4• 1 year ago

Can we get some unrelated coverage going for Google's persistent failure to fix their "show trending searches" toggle!? It doesn't work even on newer devices; there's no way to turn off trending search suggestions and search history at the same time. I just want to search, I don't need to know who got killed in Florida or what Trump said. It's there in the settings, but it doesn't work.

hnburnsy2• 1 year ago

Google destroyed the battery on the Fitbit Charge 5 with an update that apparently could not be rolled back or reset. Never admitted fault, never said what the issue was, and very little was offered to affected users. Vowed to never buy Google hardware again...

https://www.androidcentral.com/wearables/fitbit-charge-5-bat...

isaacremuant2• 1 year ago

After Google Pixel 3 Google went really anti consumer in so many fronts that switching out of it was a no brainer and while you can be tempted by the latest shiny, their level of contempt for their core customers just keeps surfacing. They're too big to care and will keep doing it until people vote with their wallets en masse, for a sufficient amount of time.

madduci• 1 year ago

There's one way to get off: move to Lineage OS or postmarketOS and enjoy the device further

maxglute• 1 year ago

Qualified and applied for the cash but it's been a couple weeks and never came. Would have settled for a couple years of Youtube premium.

izacus2• 1 year ago

marcan@ took a look at this update here: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/113914172433692339

It seems like it limits max charge voltage on one exact model of the battery to much lower limit. I bet there's a reason for it and reverting the change most likely isn't the smartest for safety.

What I don't get is why Google just doesn't come out and say it.

Aissen2• 1 year ago

Note that Google has publicly announced that the software update would reduce the battery capacity of some devices, at the beginning of the month:

For some devices (“Impacted Devices”), the software update reduces available battery capacity and impacts charging performance.

https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15701861?hl=en&...

More details in marcan's reverse engineering of the closed-source update: https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/113914172433692339

tetris113• 1 year ago

You can tell which battery you have physically by the number next to the QR code. 8230015901 is ATL (good) and 8230020501 is LSN (bad). If you're replacing your battery, make sure it's ATL.

Where do I find this info on my phone?

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

You can run this:

  adb shell cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/serial_number

Requires adb: https://developer.android.com/tools/adb

cultofmetatron• 1 year ago

used to be a long time pixel user. I had a pixel 2, 3 and 4a.

1. first one suddenly started bootlooping out of nowhere 2. second one's battery suddenly expanded out of nowhere and couldn't hold a charge more than 10 min 3. thrid one's battery started failing and woudln't turn on unless I plugged it into an external battery bank.

Sll 3 times while I was abroad and they are almost IMPOSSIBLE to get repaired. they use all csutom parts so none of teh repair shops were famiilar with them. google wouldn't do a thing till I came back to the united states to get the repairs done.

After 3 of these pieces of shit, I switched to an iphone. It just works. I've had zero issues with it and at least apple care won't force me to buy a ticket back to the states just to replace it.

neumann• 1 year ago

For me this update stopped the sim card being recognized.

Phone was a few months old, having bought a new from HK when I went traveling.

Last decent sized pixel and it was so light.

bcraven• 1 year ago

Farewell to the last sensibly-sized Pixel phone. I have been forced to the 8a, which sadly feels far too heavy and breakable compared to the simple beauty of the 4a.

amyjess• 1 year ago

I'd recommend going with Sony nowadays. The Xperia 10 series especially is a lot like a 4a.

mnsc2• 1 year ago

Sony are giving up on the compact flagship 5 series because "People are no longer interested in compact phones and would rather go for a large one if it offers the same benefits". And unfortunately the specs of the Xperia 10 just doesn't cut it for me. :(

terramars• 1 year ago

if this is due to that specific manufacturer having battery fires, i don't hate it as it seems like the battery replacement option is basically the same as a recall. completely different from a random bug causing it or an across-the-board EOL update. pixel longevity isn't great, but at least they're relatively easy to maintain and the device protection program is acceptable.

refulgentis• 1 year ago

I guess even if we didn't hate it, it'd be nice if they said that, so people knew that it's not a buggy update, but rather, they have a ticking time bomb in their pants pocket.

Wehrdo• 1 year ago

Sounds like the Lishen batteries might have a safety issue when charged fully. Not sure why else they would limit the charge on them. At least they're offering free replacement or cash payment.

userbinator• 1 year ago

Have the battery replaced for free at a walk-in center in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Singapore, or India or take advantage of a mail-in repair program (US-only).

Whatever else you think about Google, I think you'd agree that is a much better response than what Apple did.

chomp• 1 year ago

My battery wasn’t cut in half on iPhone, the duration improved

woodson• 1 year ago

What if you bought it in another country? (Directly from Google’s pixel store in that country.)

Out of luck, that’s what.

mixedCase• 1 year ago

The article indicates these are also options:

  2) Request a $100 Google Store credit that you can put toward the purchase of another Pixel phone or other hardware.
  3) Request a $50 cash payment.

slavik81• 1 year ago

My Pixel 4a won't turn on. I wonder if this might fix that problem. I guess it's worth a shot.

polka_haunts_us• 1 year ago

My dad and I both bought a 4a (5G) at the same time, ours both died within a week of each other. With mine at least I know the issue was that it just stopped charging entirely, no cable plugged in would fix it.

Unfortunately, the 5G variation doesn't appear to be part of this program.

scarface_7417• 1 year ago

What exactly did Apple “do”?

adgjlsfhk1• 1 year ago

https://www.wired.com/story/how-to-stop-apple-throttling-iph... Apple does the same thing, but doesn't offer free repairs when they do this

markerz• 1 year ago

Initially they silently under-clocked CPUs for phones with aged batteries. https://www.pcmag.com/news/apple-does-slow-iphone-speeds-but...

Then they announced a $29 battery replacement program for phones that were affected by this battery issue. https://www.pcmag.com/news/report-apple-is-refusing-to-repla...

tedunangst• 1 year ago

Sometimes it helps to be second.

m_fayer• 1 year ago

This borderline bricked my partner’s phone. We’re in Berlin. The “walk in centers” here are a few random sleepy repair shops barely aware of what’s happening who might be able to help you in a few weeks, maybe.

She bought an iPhone.

01100011• 1 year ago

In other news: https://techcrunch.com/2025/01/30/google-issues-voluntary-ex...

thegrim33• 1 year ago

HN headline is misleading - it reduces battery life for some 4a users, not all 4a users, and anybody that is affected (and they have a procedure to verify whether you're affected) can get a free battery replacement, fixing the problem, or alternatively, cash.

dang• 1 year ago

(This was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42884803, where the headline is different. We merged that thread hither)

nfriedly• 1 year ago

I'd be interested in acquiring a Pixel 4a from someone who doesn't want theirs anymore. I replaced the battery in my Pixel 2 myself - it was a bit of work but not too bad overall (it's probably not waterproof anymore, though). nathan@[hn username].com

bmaupin8• 1 year ago

Google has finally pushed the source of the Pixel 4a battery update: https://android.googlesource.com/kernel/msm/+log/refs/heads/...

Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update

Related Stories