Reddit user zaliver
Google has messed up. For the past few months, one story keeps coming back again and again to haunt the Pixel line-up, and it’s all centered around battery woes. Specifically, something fishy around the Pixel 4a’s and 6a’s batteries, with mandatory updates, restricted battery charging, battery replacement programs, cashbacks to buy a new phone, and the odd exploding battery or two.
Throughout this entire mess, one thing has been abundantly clear: Google is trying to sweep the news or pretend it isn’t happening. No matter how often we reached out for comment or how bad the news got when the Pixel 6a, then the 7a joined the 4a in the battery-of-doom scenario, Google has remained unnervingly quiet about it all, only sharing official communication around updates and compensation.
As a Pixel user since the Pixel 2 XL in 2017, and someone who has been recommending Pixels to everyone around me (my husband has the Pixel 7 Pro, my aunt the 6 Pro, my mom the 5), this leaves me very, very confused and frustrated. My trust in Google, and in its ability to handle any hardware defect, has also plummeted to below zero. The Pixel 10 series? I’m really excited about it, but do I trust Google enough to charge its new phone on my bedside table at night? Hmmmm… not really.
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Will the Pixel 4a, 6a, and 7a battery issues affect your Pixel 10 buying decision? 70 votes Yes. I'm not a buying a Pixel until Google explains itself. 29 % Maybe, I'm still debating it. 27 % No, I'm not concerned about this for the Pixel 10 series. 44 %
The Pixel battery fiasco is a lesson in corporate ambiguity
Reddit user zaliver
If you haven’t been paying close attention to Google’s Pixel battery saga, let me recap the story. It started on January 6, 2025, the first day of CES mayhem, when all eyes are on other tech news. Google slipped a notice to Pixel 4a users informing them of an unexpected Battery Performance Program update, which should’ve improved their battery performance and stability. A brief mention that some units would see the opposite effect caught our eyes, but we thought it was generous of Google to offer compensation for these affected users, especially on an out-of-warranty four-year-old phone.
If that’s all there was to it, I’d be fine, but things quickly went downhill. Pixel 4a owners started complaining about the update nuking their battery life, with some phones barely making it through a few minutes of screen-on time. We discovered that Pixel 4a units shipped with two different types of batteries — Lishen (LSN) and Amperex Technology Limited (ATL). The latter are good, the former bad. And the update had dropped the LSN’s usable battery charge by an astonishing 56%. None of that info came from Google, though, but from our internet sleuthing. A month later, the Pixel 4a was recalled entirely in Australia, with yet no explanation or commitment to do better from Google.
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