The Pixel 4a might be left for dead by Google, but this is what owners are doing to keep their phones alive

The start of 2025 brought along many things and among others – really bad news for Pixel 4a owners. A software update caused wicked battery problems, rendering the handset unusable, and now, the Pixel 4a is being recalled in Australia over an alleged fire hazard.

The good news is that… well, there isn't great news per se, but some users are finding workarounds to keep their beloved Pixel 4a phones alive and kicking.

What happened?

As I mentioned above, it started in the first days of January. The veteran mid-ranger received Android 13 and then, out of the blue, Google offered free battery replacements for the Pixel 4a: apparently, the software update caused some showstopper issues with the phone's battery.

Some users received emails from the company informing them that the update, instead of improving battery performance, would actually reduce capacity and affect charging:



Nothing like a reduced battery capacity and crippled charging performance after getting a software update, right? Any Apple users out there that can relate?

However, not all Pixel 4a devices were (are) impacted, and the Pixel 4a 5G appears to be unaffected. Users can check their eligibility on Google's support website by entering their IMEI number.

Then, people got mad

Really mad. The "Pixel 4a", "battery" and "Android 13" keywords return quite the heated number of discussions on Reddit – many of which I simply can't repost here, because the four-letter fury is unleashed in a big way.

Either way, people were baffled and angry:



Some Pixel 4a users got their devices rendered nearly unusable and rightly so felt misled, as a software update should (in theory) bring along improvements rather than what they describe as forced obsolescence.



Naturally, people started discussing suing Google because of the battery fiasco.



Nobody wants this to happen to them.

If you ask me, Google should have warned people way before the Android 13 update with e-mails, but also with on-device notifications, explaining the situation in detail. Preferably, these should have been multiple notifications, since we are not to be trusted with single-event notifications.

People are right to be furious, nobody likes post factum announcements. My two cents is that the free battery replacement was not enough, although it's still something. Probably the best thing for Google to do was to offer some serious discounts on the Pixel 8a, for example. The Big G certainly can afford to pay for the difference – it's not like there are billions of people who still use the Pixel 4a in 2025.

Right now, many users will be tempted to ditch Google for good and head to other brands. Google is in the top five largest American companies by market capitalization, so giving a – say, 40% off the Pixel 8a – wouldn't cause major financial troubles, right?