David Imel / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google’s shock battery replace for the Pixel 4a has prompted extreme battery drain for a lot of customers.
- Google has eliminated older firmware for the Pixel 4a, leaving customers with no official solution to downgrade from the problematic replace.
- We advise customers to not obtain rehosted firmware, because it may have been tampered with.
Pixel 4a customers have been on a wild journey on their trusty previous telephone ever since Google rolled out a shock battery replace. Beneath the Pixel 4a Battery Efficiency Program, the replace seemingly improves the battery on sure Pixel 4a items, but it surely made issues considerably worse for a lot of customers. Customers had been scrambling to downgrade to older updates, however Google has now closed that street by eradicating obtain hyperlinks for these older firmware.
A Reddit person seen that Google used to host virtually three years’ price of firmware pictures for the Pixel 4a, starting from its out-of-the-box Android 10 replace to the final Android 13 replace when the machine reached its end-of-life standing. That is pretty commonplace apply by Google, because it hosts loads of older firmware for virtually all of its current units.
Nevertheless, Google has gone forward and eliminated all older firmware for the Pixel 4a (codename: sunfish). The one firmware that the corporate now formally hosts for the Pixel 4a is the latest January 2025 shock battery replace (TQ3A.230805.001.S2), which customers have additionally began calling the ‘replace of dying’ because it renders the machine virtually unusable. For therefore many Pixel 4a customers, their machine nonetheless powers on and features on this replace, however battery life has been so severely impacted that their telephone barely survives half an hour of screen-on time.
Google often doesn’t take away older firmware until there’s something deeply problematic with them, like a hardbrick bug, for example. So, for this wave of elimination, there should have been some greater difficulty with the firmware to warrant such a transfer.
Sadly, Google hasn’t communicated its purpose for eradicating older firmware. We’ve contacted the corporate once more to be taught extra concerning the Pixel 4a’s battery replace usually and this wave of firmware replace removals specifically. We’ll hold you up to date after we be taught extra.
As we famous in our earlier report, customers who hadn’t obtained this shock replace had begun resorting to blocking community requests. Others had been seeking to set up older LineageOS customized ROMs, whereas some had been seeking to downgrade to the earlier end-of-life replace that they had fortunately been on for a lot of months. With the elimination of older firmware, customers will seemingly find yourself with rehosted hyperlinks. It’s a nasty concept to obtain rehosted firmware as they might have been tampered with, so we’d advise customers from taking place this route.
Are you impacted by the Pixel 4a’s ‘replace of dying’? How has your expertise been? How a lot did Google quote you for a restore? Are you exploring alternate options like putting in a customized ROM? Tell us within the feedback under!
