[OliveMate]

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/

[chasil]

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

[kees99]

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)

[chasil]

Thank you for sharing your expertise.

It seems to be unbelievable that none of this has become part of AOSP.

I should have a battery setting that optimizes either for battery longevity, or for maximum power delivery. These settings should incorporate best practice, such as you have outlined.

The last stable ACC release was in late 2023, and it appears to remain the best battery management tool for longevity.

Why is this so?

I rewrote your script slightly, and ran it on my Pixel 3.

  find /sys/devices/platform |
  grep battery/uevent$ |
  head -1 |
  xargs grep NOW

  POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=3955800
  POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=-222656

Also:

  find /sys/devices/platform -name uevent |
  grep battery |
  head -1 |
  xargs grep NOW


  find /sys/devices/platform \
    -path '*/battery/*' \
    -name uevent |
  head -1 |
  xargs grep NOW

[yencabulator]

> I should have a battery setting that optimizes either for battery longevity, or for maximum power delivery.

Newer Pixels have a concept of "bed time" and charge slower overnight, for battery health.

[KORraN]

This is also present in my 4a, perhaps it's a feature of Android 13.

[gruez]

>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.

[chasil]

Installing Lineage by itself will drastically reduce power consumption on many devices, as vendor bloat is wiped. A net gain is possible, even with ACC 80% in place.

With a Pixel, there is less bloat, so it is less of a factor with this particular device. However, you don't get the full suite of Chrome/Maps/Gmail/Drive/Photos/etc. installed by default, and what you have not installed will not drain your battery.

In any case, one would hope that Google's safeguards are equaled by ACC.

[JudasGoat]

My 4a went from 3 day battery life to less than a day, immediately after the "update".

[brailsafe]

This seems surprisingly high to me, unless you're constantly on extreme power saving mode. I liked the 4a and still have it in a drawer, but replaced it partly because I couldn't order a new screen and the battery life was frustratingly terrible after a while

[ikr678]

It doesnt have to be on powersaving- just by leaving wifi and bluetooth off I would regularly get 3 days on a charge.

Data is cheap where I live, but also I dont use my phone to stream music/video.

[compsciphd]

wifi uses more power than cell data?

[tlamponi]

  > 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

[beretguy]

> 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.

[chasil]

Just be careful that you do not get anything sold by Verizon, as these unfortunates do not allow bootloader unlocking.

I also remember some rumor that all Pixels must access WiFi before they will allow bootloader unlocking in the developer options.

[sharpshadow]

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

[chasil]

A URL can be found below to load it back into your custom ROM, and supposedly the same camera can be found in the Play store.

[burningChrome]

>>> 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.

[chasil]

I've loaded Cyanogenmod on the HTC Incredible 1 & 2, and the BN Nook color.

I've loaded Lineage on the Nexus 6, Oneplus 3a & 5 & Nord N200, the original Pixel, and the Pixel 3a XL.

Pixels are the most forgiving, and the hardest to brick. They are also the best for VoLTE.

I also have an N100, which is not supported by Lineage.

[Lammy]

Do I misunderstand what Ubuntu Touch is? I thought it was its own thing whose only relation to Android was the BSP, not some type of layer on top of Android. If so then it seems irrelevant and unfair to bring up w/r/t the well-tested Android-to-different-Android path.

[saidinesh5]

Unless your phone has full mainline kernel support (pinephone, librem 5, pocophone f1 etc...), All these Linux on phone projects mostly use Android system services (init, surfaceflinger, rild etc..) to talk to the device hardware, without bringing up the Android UI.

They do this so that they don't have to reverse engineer and write the hardware drivers from scratch and simply use Android's user space drivers for them.

I haven't been involved in that domain for a while, but it basically meant reusing the contents of your device's /system and /vendor partitions and simply installing the Linux OS into /data.

[aquasync]

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?).

[sangnoir]

Installing Lineage should help battery life. @marcan[1] dissected the new update and puts the blames an overlay in the new kernel that changed the charge voltage.

1. https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/113914172433692339

[chasil]

What the hey, let's do it...

Random Google engineer on personal machine trashes Pixel 4a batteries in GPL violation

https://social.treehouse.systems/@marcan/113914172433692339

[chasil]

"So... this was built by a random engineer on their personal machine."

How did this random engineer command that all previous firmware images be taken offline?

Alternate ROMs look much safer right now.

Should this be submitted to HN separately?

[chasil]

The new battery behavior is probably just some POSIX userspace process running under Linux, or perhaps some kernel tweak.

The whole of userspace will be replaced when LineageOS reformats all of the partitions.

It is possible that the new battery behavior has been injected into some deeper part of the hardware, but LineageOS is unlikely to make that worse.

[conaclos]

> 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?

[saidinesh5]

I think the comment is responding to the fears of..

"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."

These lithium batteries usually last longer when you don't fully discharge them and fully charge them regularly. 20-80%. No idea why manufacturers don't just call that range as 0-100%.

[wanderingmind]

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

[chasil]

Because the 4a is on extended support, is not recommended, and cessation can happen any time now?

https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

[snailmailstare]

Is that different on lineageOS or just not as clearly stated?

[chasil]

LineageOS devices are subject to desupport at any time, when the maintainer(s) makes the decision to retire it (and no volunteers appear to replace the maintainer).

With the sunset of 3g, many devices that were not capable of 4g were retired.

That being said, Lineage still does support several Pixels that Graphene has desupported. In fact, I am typing this on a Pixel 3a XL which is in this category.

The original Pixel, Pixel 2 and 2XL are still supported by LineageOS:

https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/#google

Graphene has explicitly removed everything prior to the Pixel 4, including:

Pixel 3a XL (bonito), Pixel 3a (sargo), Pixel 3 XL (crosshatch), Pixel 3 (blueline), Pixel 2 XL (taimen), Pixel 2 (walleye), Pixel XL (marlin), Pixel (sailfish).

Edit: This extended support does come at some risk. The chipsets used in Android can sometimes have showstopper bugs. Sometimes, these cannot be patched, although maintainers will go to great lengths to find solutions. The "firmware age" is reflected in the "vendor security patch" date in Lineage - the older, the more dangerous.

Graphene largely does not allow this.

[drowsspa]

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

[Zak]

Play Integrity Fix usually solves that. Be sure to leave one star reviews for apps that mistreat you in this way.

https://github.com/chiteroman/PlayIntegrityFix

[chasil]

The Wells Fargo app runs on my Oneplus 5/Lineage. It is not rooted (with Magisk), but root adb is offered in developer settings.

Cisco Duo also runs on this device.

This will be a decision for the app vendor, but I'd rather get monthly updates than maintain a locked bootloader.

Uber has done some strange things.

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

"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]

> 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.

[Gigachad]

There have been quite a few real world examples of malware scanning the internet and just infecting every vulnerable device it can find. Though this mostly only affects things directly exposed like routers or servers.

[mathstuf]

> 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.

[Suppafly]

>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]

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.

[KORraN]

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.

[BoorishBears]

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.

[BoorishBears]

https://9to5google.com/2025/01/30/pixel-android-voluntary-ex...

> Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

As if to make my point.

[ChoGGi]

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

[OliveMate]

I can say from experience that it doesn't. I get daily notifications & popups telling me that I'm X days out of date.

[KORraN]

Supposedly, I've removed downloaded update using instructions from https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Pixel_4a_Battery_Perform... - hopefully this will stop popups:

>Users can delete an already downloaded (and not yet installed) update: Settings -> Apps -> All Apps -> Google Play Services -> Storage and cache -> Manage Space and from there on delete all data through the "Clear all data" button.

[rjmorris]

> I can say from experience that it doesn't.

No, I don't think you can say that. If you're getting daily notifications about being out of date, then you clearly haven't gotten the update yet. There are two possibilities: (1) You have rebooted. In this case, the dev option must have worked, because you rebooted and didn't get the update, exactly what the dev option promised. (2) You haven't rebooted. In this case, the dev option doesn't apply, because it specifically refers to what happens after you reboot.

[throw-the-towel]

If you're rooted you can turn (most of) these off.

[QuantumGood]

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.

[kllrnohj]

> 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_74]

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.

[jpalawaga]

They basically did the same thing, which is why there was a lawsuit. It's also why Google preemitively offered users free money--it was informed by the lawsuit against Apple for the same shit.

[scarface_74]

The purpose of the throttling was to keep the phone from shutting off when the battery was old. That feature is still in iOS.

[kristopolous]

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

[lynndotpy]

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 :(

[homebrewer]

This comment equates Android with Google phones for some reason. The complaints have nothing to do with Android — side loading is light years ahead of Apple (and third party application stores can finally automatically update applications). Call recording works fine on my friend's Xiaomi 14T (I think) that he bought just a couple of weeks ago, and it works fine on my own device that's on latest Lineage (Android 15). There's lots of choice in UI depending on which vendor you're going with; I'm fine with stock Lineage (i.e. stock Android). There's lots of choice price wise (even the homeless have smartphones these days), while the cheapest iPhone costs about two median monthly salaries here.

Just don't buy anything from Google, they've always screwed something up.

[lynndotpy]

I have a very small pool of Androids I consider. Pixels maintain a strong security model (similar to what iPhones have), and they allow you to re-lock the bootloader after installing a non-stock OS. It's between a Pixel, or a FairPhone.

I liked Lineage, but an unlocked bootloader is a security non-starter for a device that's so personal and vital.

For those using the stock OS, Googles are nice because you "only" have Google's spyware built in to the OS.

[dhc02]

I didn't realize there were some non-stick OSes that you could re-lock the bootloader for. Which ones?

[lynndotpy]

GrapheneOS and CalyxOS are the only ones I'm aware of! It requires OS support and the phone to support it too, so it's a rare combo.

[spencerflem]

Same- I stick with them out of spite, since I refuse to use a device that doesn't allow replacing the OS or installing your own software ("sideloading")

But they're pretty clearly worse as phones and I'll go to my grave mad about the headphone jack.

[JTbane]

I'm still mad that I have to keep track of a tiny 3.5mm to USB-C dongle.

[spencerflem]

I lost mine yesterday -_+ have to buy a new one I guess

pure evil

[Lammy]

I've been very happy to have my headphone port back since I upgraded from iPhone 7 to REDMAGIC 9S Pro

[olvy0]

Hear hear

[m463]

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.

[kristopolous]

Really I think technology lines can also suffer from Gramsci's interregnum.

[m463]

interesting thought. (I had to look it up)

I wonder how you mean it. Is it that older products with good fundamentals are being replaced with younger quick-to-market technologies without those fundamentals, and different (possibly) wrong things get optimized?

Or is it experienced engineers with "well known" fundamentals are not involved in new products?

...

"Gramaci's Prison Notebooks that 'the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear'"

"An interregnum is a period of discontinuity or "gap" in a government, organization, or social order."

[brailsafe]

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.

[silon42]

Also the OS is copying Apple, making it worse.

[brailsafe]

Nah the OS is way better than iOS, unless you're joking about the update retroactively degrading the device.

[nullc]

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

[kristopolous]

Yes but these are physical locations, not personal objects.

The reason I don't choose a hotel 500 miles away is fairly obvious.

This also applies to parking lots for the same reason...

I think it's just cargo culting products. Apple made electronics sexy fashion accessories through their marketing, advertising and branding.

The problem is the misattribution of their success to the poor choices they have the customer loyalty to get away with.

Nobody has said "well thank God my new MacBook has no ports" or "I'm glad my battery isn't removable". The support column for these decisions is empty.

[nullc]

> Nobody has said "well thank God my new MacBook has no ports" or "I'm glad my battery isn't removable". The support column for these decisions is empty.

No, but they do say "thank god my device survived being splashed by water" or "I'm happy this teeny tiny thin device doesn't leave an unsightly lump in my pocket"

The de-featuring isn't capricious -- it's a result of optimizing for different tradeoffs. While it would be best for the customers if multiple vendors managed to tile the pareto frontier of feature combinations, allowing us all to pick a product that serves us best, for the vendors bunching up around a single point is a more stable equilibrium.

[kristopolous]

I've never bought that argument. Apple wanted to sell high margin accessories that get broken, lost and replaced often because people hold on to their devices about 4 years now instead of the 1-2 from 10 years ago.

I use a panasonic wired headphone with a mic, $10. Airpods are $200. They wanted to increase their costs and frequency of purchase by hiding it behind accessories with higher profits and shorter longevity than the primary device.

[nullc]

How does that explain the same decisions being made by other vendors that don't sell headphones?

[scarface_74]

You realize that not only can you buy non Apple headphones, Apple sells Bluetooth headphones with the same integration that the AirPods have for $70?

[schroeding]

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.

[hnburnsy]

>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]

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.

[lupire]

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.

[ikiris]

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

[computehyper]

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

[pxoe]

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.)