A few weeks ago, I noticed a decrease in the battery performance of my Google Pixel 4a. I didn’t have time to investigate further, but while the battery used to last over 24 hours, I now had to recharge my phone just 2 or 3 hours after a full charge. Really?. I knew something was going one, perhaps my phone that I have for more than 3 years was too old and need a replacement 🤔.

But I decided to investigate a bit more and it took me few seconds to realize I was not the only one with that problem recently. My problem was basically in the news!.

Basically what happened is that in January of this year, Google launched the “Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program“.

Google has determined that certain Pixel 4a phones require a software update to improve the stability of their battery’s performance. An automatic update would reduce battery life and charging performance for some “Impacted Devices.” Affected customers had one year to choose from three options: sending in their phone for a battery replacement, receiving $50 (or the local equivalent), or getting $100 in Google Store credit toward a new Pixel phone. The support document did not mention any safety or hazard concerns.

I am not going into the details. There are good articles out there expanding the information. I recommend specifically this one who said they reach out directly to Google about this problem and they tried to get answers.

I am just listing Google’s response from the mentioned article:

• It seems to have been built by a Google engineer “on their personal machine, not the proper buildsystem.”

• There is no source provided, as would normally be required of a Linux kernel build, though it may only need to be provided on request under the GNU General Public License.

• The maximum charge voltage of certain battery profiles changes from 4.44 volts to 3.95, which would mean batteries cannot charge to anywhere near their former potential.

• There are two main battery profiles, with distinct “ATL” and “LSN” markers; Martin suggests they relate to Amperex Technology Limited and Lishen, manufacturers of battery cells.

• LSN-tagged batteries assigned the “debug” profile can see capacity reduced from 3,080 milliamp hours (mAh) to 1,539 mAh.

To me, this is a fiasco from Google, forcing users to update phones that were working perfectly. We’ve seen a similar situation with Apple in the past.