Sudden drop in battery life - Google Pixel 4a Questions & Answers

Hello everyone,
I bought this phone in August of this year.
Initially I was fairly satisfied with it (despite chassis creaks and the likes), but after a few months of use, battery life has taken a huge hit, especially after the update to Android 12. During the first couple of weeks of owning the device (where I took all precautions that I knew of to condition and take care of the battery), I was routinely getting 5-6 hours of SOT, with at least one instance of more than 7 hours of screen time.
Now, I'm consistently getting 1,5-2 hours of SOT, with identical use and charging patterns as before (as far as I can tell). Has anybody experienced something similar, and were you able to address the issue?
Any help is appreciated. Thank you in advance.

May be a battery failure, they can go fast.
Any swelling is a failure... look for signs of bulging at the display and rear cover.

Sounds like a cell fas failed in the battery?
I've had similar symptoms on various devices before, and that was always the cause.

Related

[Q] Battery upgrade?

Is a cell phone battery available on the market, for the HTC 7 Pro, of better quality than the standard battery?
Billions and Billions
Oversizedturtle said:
Is a cell phone battery available on the market, for the HTC 7 Pro, of better quality than the standard battery?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I assume that by "better quality", you mean extended? If so, then yep! And, to paraphrase Carl Sagan, "there are billions and billions of them, on eBay."
This is the one I bought, at least a year ago. Comes with 2 of them, and a wall charger. I got a few of these (5 or 6 batteries), and now keep a battery stashed away in various places (car, home, pocket, work, etc.), so I never have a dead phone. :victory:
Of course, you would also need a battery door (I would suggest finding some other, cheaper seller, and perhaps do what I did: buy a better battery, and contact a seller who has listed a lesser battery with a door, like this one, tell them you already have a battery, and ask if they would be willing to list the door separately at a reasonable price.)
And yeah, I know the batteries are labelled for the EVO, but they also fit the 7 Pro/Arrive.
Here you go. I have the same one on my phone. I have had it for about 2 years now. After I got mine, I wanted to see how long I could make the battery last under real world conditions. For talk time, it lasted almost 8 hours continuously even while driving and going through weak areas that drains the battery more. Also, surfing the net lasted about 5 hours. That's with having pages with flash and other active stuff going on. It was in good areas and bad areas for the signal. Then to watch movies that I put on my phone, lasted almost 4 hours & 20 minutes.
Here's the link for the battery.
http://www.mugen-power-batteries.co...-for-sprint-htc-arrive-with-battery-door.html

[Q] What is the typical *total* lifetime of a battery (not just between charges)

I'm considering buying a phone with a non-replaceable battery. Although I am not worried about whether my phone will keep a charge all day, I am worried about whether the battery will stop holding a charge before I'm ready to replace the whole phone. My current phone (Galaxy S2) is two years old, but I've had to get a new battery twice (and so has my wife, so I don't think it's a fluke). I'd like to keep my new phone at least that long, but I'm worried about the battery being usable for more than a year or 18 months.
From the searching I did, I've noticed that most people around here don't seem very concerned about whether the battery is replaceable. I'm just wondering if that's because they are buying new phones more frequently or because the batteries don't go bad as quickly as I've been led to believe.
What is the typical *total* lifetime of a battery (not just between charges
My android phone battery can usually use 1-2 years. No matter what I use it, it also can last use about use. May be the most important that I am lucky dog and bought the high quality phones.

Replacement Battery Question

Okay so two days ago I put in my second replacement battery in the 2 or so years I've had it.
The battery that came in it I guess was faulty as within two months it started overheating like hell and draining the battery very fast as a result. So about 6 months after getting it I ordered a new battery replacement from NewPower99, and I don't remember when I first started using it, but It's been good until about a month ago.
So I got the newest one from ZTHY Tech. And I put it in, but I don't know if it's just me, but it seems to be draining a bit to fast, and this battery has better reviews then the newpower so I don't see how it could be just how this one is.
So I was wondering, is there something I should do before charging it again? Like should I completely discharge it or something?? Also, what's discharging?
For all your battery information needs: http://batteryuniversity.com/
Best battery place on the internet IMNSHO.
Elsareyes, I suspect your battery connections may be the culprit. Look through this thread so see how to fix.
Nah, I found out the problem, I think ZTHY is just a **** brand. Which would explain why it's 20 dollars cheaper.
I put back in my old one, and despite overheating from time to time, it lasts a hell of a lot longer. And it's a year and a half old.
I'm gonna buy another of the good battery in a few weeks when I have enough money.
That's good, keep us posted on the 'good battery' when you get it. We all need a good reliable battery vendor for this tablet.

Battery Capacity Expectation

I searched this before posting, but the thread had no replies from January so hoping I can gain some insight and clarification on this.
I am new to Android and avoided it for a long time due to being perfectly satisfied with my Blackberry Q10. However a few years ago, I was intrigued by the original Pixel and knew whenever I switched , if I went Android it would be a Pixel. It ended up being a Pixel 2.
I say this because I spend a lot of time googling and researching before i ask a question to make sure i am as familiar as possible before i ask something that can be found just as fast on my own.
That being said, i can't find an answer to "What is a typical capacity loss over a number of months...?"
I just got the phone in January. Didn't know anything about capacity until i noticed a huge drop in expected battery time after unplugging my phone. It used to be 21-23 hours expected from 100%. Now its only about 10-15 hours, depending on the day. Researched batteries and learned about Accubattery. Looked at the health and saw i'm only at 2284 our of 2700. It says GOOD health..but is that really good health after only 3 1/2 months? Also..unfortunately i have no idea what the original real life capacity was because i never checked until End of March when i discovered Accubattery.
Just wondering should i return the phone or accept this level of battery. At this rate..does't seem like I will get through a year on this phone.
ADDITIONAL INFO - I have used 3rd party charging cables (Nekteck)and Samsung bricks. The cables give me roughly the same amount of juice as the charger that came with the phone ( around 1300 Mah max, more juice if I'm charging from a lower percentage start point )
Tone96 said:
I searched this before posting, but the thread had no replies from January so hoping I can gain some insight and clarification on this.
I am new to Android and avoided it for a long time due to being perfectly satisfied with my Blackberry Q10. However a few years ago, I was intrigued by the original Pixel and knew whenever I switched , if I went Android it would be a Pixel. It ended up being a Pixel 2.
I say this because I spend a lot of time googling and researching before i ask a question to make sure i am as familiar as possible before i ask something that can be found just as fast on my own.
That being said, i can't find an answer to "What is a typical capacity loss over a number of months...?"
I just got the phone in January. Didn't know anything about capacity until i noticed a huge drop in expected battery time after unplugging my phone. It used to be 21-23 hours expected from 100%. Now its only about 10-15 hours, depending on the day. Researched batteries and learned about Accubattery. Looked at the health and saw i'm only at 2284 our of 2700. It says GOOD health..but is that really good health after only 3 1/2 months? Also..unfortunately i have no idea what the original real life capacity was because i never checked until End of March when i discovered Accubattery.
Just wondering should i return the phone or accept this level of battery. At this rate..does't seem like I will get through a year on this phone.
ADDITIONAL INFO - I have used 3rd party charging cables (Nekteck)and Samsung bricks. The cables give me roughly the same amount of juice as the charger that came with the phone ( around 1300 Mah max, more juice if I'm charging from a lower percentage start point )
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stop apps from running in the background. Your WhatsApp, Facebook, Marco Polo, weather widgets, etc are using your battery.
Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk
I don't have many running in the back. I don't have Marco Polo or Whatsapp. All my others I shut down to and when I check apps are using very low percentage. But my question is more the battery health reading. is 2200 healthy after 3 months use?
Is the phone battery actually draining twice as fast now or is the battery reporting just wrong?
The phone seems to behave normally, but being I'm not an Android user for long I don't know what normal is. I know things differ phone to phone. If I use my screen and read articles the battery drains fast to me. Compared to others who consider reading as light use. I get "better" life if I watch videos. I suppose because I'm not touching the screen. Streaming I can do for hours. I think what I'm trying to understand is...how accurate and important is a battery capacity reading? Should I be concerned that it says im only getting around 2200 out of 2700? For an almost phone I would think the capacity would be closer to the design capacity?
Tone96 said:
The phone seems to behave normally, but being I'm not an Android user for long I don't know what normal is. I know things differ phone to phone. If I use my screen and read articles the battery drains fast to me. Compared to others who consider reading as light use. I get "better" life if I watch videos. I suppose because I'm not touching the screen. Streaming I can do for hours. I think what I'm trying to understand is...how accurate and important is a battery capacity reading? Should I be concerned that it says im only getting around 2200 out of 2700? For an almost phone I would think the capacity would be closer to the design capacity?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Take a screen shot of the reduced battery capacity reading and send it to Google's customer service from your support menu in the system settings.

Why I'm selling my OP6 I thought I'd keep until it physically died.

I'll keep it as short as possible without opening myself up to all the usual attacks blaming me for the issues.
I enjoyed most of the nearly 2 years I had my OnePlus 6, at the time it was nearly flagship Samsung/Apple quality for a fraction of the price. Since then, every phone has started having better battery life, better cameras, and sometimes other good features often within the same price range.
I noticed the past few months I've often had to recharge my OP6 2 times a day from ~10% to ~90% to get through the day. Not the worst thing in the world but pretty bad for me, considering I don't like to have to stop and stay near an outlet when I'm doing something. Some days I'd have to charge 3 times.
I was on a late Pie build for a long time because the phone was working so well, and if I've learned anything from my Android experience, if it's working smoothly, far more often than not if you try to upgrade/update the system, you're just going to cause problems rather than make anything better. But I thought maybe my battery issues were from apps and messed up settings and OS files over the nearly 2 years past. I updated to 10 with a completely clean wipe using fastboot. I even factory reset and re-installed another Android 10 ROM. But I've learned the battery life is something that's just a limitation of the undersized battery they put in this phone.
The worst part that really pushed me over the edge was the fact that suddenly on 10 I had all kinds of software and firmware bugs. FCs where there were none before, several apps hanging once in a while, features not working properly. None of this happened in 9, but persisted through clean resets and updates of 10.
I decided this phone had a decent run but is no longer for me. Phones now have much better cameras, huge batteries, and generally better features for not too much more than I paid for the OP6.
Sold my OP6 online and my S20+ is coming this week. I don't plan to buy another OnePlus phone until they put in a large battery (~5000mAh or more) and get cameras on par with flagships. They're not by any means bad phones, I just see them as a bit expensive for the features they offer. Though, I admit the build quality seems excellent. Have not had a single hardware issue with my phone, it's had plenty of water and humidity exposure and has never once had an issue for a second. I drop my phone all the time and never had a major scratch, no cracks (though it's in a case), nor any other issues.
Just thought I'd give some perspective. Personally, if someone asked, I'd say the OP6 is a fine phone for the used price they go for now if you don't mind an average quality camera and don't use your phone all day to the point where battery life is a huge concern.
Sounds more like a run down battery. Just get it replaced and it will be much better again!
Of course, newer phones have better cameras and battery, that's the course of things.
I just returned a brand new oneplus 8 pro due to a faulty screen. Of course, it is a better phone in every way. But after going back to my oneplus 6 i have realized that I don't need to upgrade this year. It's running like a machine, snappy as hell, without any issues. So I will also get a new battery soon and use this phone at least another year, maybe two. Only very few phones are still going that strong 2 years later.
Hmm interesting...
I've used mine for well over a year, and I didn't cared much about caring my battery(plugged in all night, inconsistent recharge, etc...). Still, this 3300mAh lasts over 5h30m SOT, OOS10 at any workload(usually I get about 6h 20m, but in terms of real world, a bit less than that.). If I do some extra work and install some custom ROMs, I could sqeeze out a 8h. So I thought it was more than I can expect from a 3300. Strange that yours degraded much faster.... Hope you enjoy your S20+!
Dabarr said:
Sounds more like a run down battery. Just get it replaced and it will be much better again!
Of course, newer phones have better cameras and battery, that's the course of things.
I just returned a brand new oneplus 8 pro due to a faulty screen. Of course, it is a better phone in every way. But after going back to my oneplus 6 i have realized that I don't need to upgrade this year. It's running like a machine, snappy as hell, without any issues. So I will also get a new battery soon and use this phone at least another year, maybe two. Only very few phones are still going that strong 2 years later.
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Click to collapse
Eh after 300 cycles or so it should not be degraded to needing to be charged 2 or 3 times a day, especially since I babied it trying to only charge it 50% at a time max. Waste of time and money to pay expensive shipping to send it to a 3rd party repair company which may damage the phone (which has happened to me every time I've sent a phone to an "approved" repair center in the past) and the water resistance is destroyed after that as well. It was better to sell it before it became worthless and get a new phone I'll be happier with.
TheNetwork said:
Eh after 300 cycles or so it should not be degraded to needing to be charged 2 or 3 times a day, especially since I babied it trying to only charge it 50% at a time max. Waste of time and money to pay expensive shipping to send it to a 3rd party repair company which may damage the phone (which has happened to me every time I've sent a phone to an "approved" repair center in the past) and the water resistance is destroyed after that as well. It was better to sell it before it became worthless and get a new phone I'll be happier with.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Batteries are a roll of the dice. Most of them will behave as intended, some of them will die out quickly.
I bought mine off of Swappa expecting to have to replace the battery as this has happened before but this battery is still doing awesome, even to this day.
Stock kernel isn't terrible, but I've found Smurf Kernel and bluspark give me some amazing battery lives that I've never seen before. I managed to go about 42 hours with 4 hours of SoT.
Another thing is battery replacements are not very difficult for this phone (I'm a certified phone tech so I guess our experiences vary). That's one of the big reasons I got it to begin with. It's very similar to any recent Samsung Galaxy phone in terms of battery replacement. Pretty easy compared to a lot of other phones I looked at.
I've been having the same battery issues on my OP6, high idle drain >2%/hr in custom ROMs and 1.5%/hr in OOS. Barely get 5 hour SoT on a good day. Beleive me, I've tried everything. I'm a student so can't exactly afford a new phone, I'll charge my phone twice a day for now and get a battery replacement in a few months, hopefully that fixes my issues. I've been pretty rough on my battery I'll say but it still degraded faster than I thought.

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