Smartphones are the most integrated technology in our daily lives, far surpassing television and any other media. Through them we can play games, get information, watch our favourite TV programme, pay our taxes or our tea at the coffee shop, and even call our grandmother and ask her if everything is OK. In short, our mobile phone is our life.
That’s why the update that Google rolled out to its Pixel 4a devices in January has messed up the routine of all its users around the world. The mandatory update has resulted in abnormally high consumption of the device’s battery, and now an error message appears encouraging the user to replace the battery with a new one.
There have been countless messages from users over the last few hours on both social media and forum threads (including some threads on Reddit) explaining that their Pixel 4a and battery were working perfectly fine before the update, and Google hasn’t offered any information on the matter, so it’s unclear whether it’s all due to a serious bug that they will (hopefully) patch quickly, or a very unorthodox way of forcing a planned obsolescence for this range that was launched in 2020.
Have you suffered from Google’s mandatory update on your Pixel 4a?