Google’s Recent Pixel 4a Update Was to Solve Overheating Battery Risks: Revealed Via Australian Product Safety Recall Notice
The California-based smartphone and tech maker – Google in the month of January 2025 announced that the brand plans to roll out a new update to its 2020-released Pixel 4a device which had stopped receiving monthly updates back in August 2023, three years after its debut. While it was then unclear why exactly the brand was rolling out an update all of a sudden, an Australian product safety recall notice points out that it was due to the overheating battery risks that the device possessed.
Read more about it below.
The Recent Update for the Pixel 4a Was to Resolve Battery Overheating Issues?
As per the safety recall notice issued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), the update (based on Android 13) which was said to carry new battery management features for the Pixel 4a device and which was intended to improve its stability, was actually rolled out to solve the battery overheating problem and thereby to eradicate the potential risks it could cause.
Speaking more, the notice elaborates that the Pixel 4a smartphone with the model number – ‘G025N’ and which was sold during the period from 1st August 2020 to 30th September 2022, due to the battery overheating problem, may cause fire and/or burn to its users, posing a hazardous threat. However, it should also be noted that not all the Google Pixel 4a devices had this issue.
Additionally, the update that was rolled out also had an issue, as it reduced the maximum voltage of the battery from 4.45V to 3.95V, it brought down the charging capacity down by 56%. Reportedly, many Pixel 4a users had also complained that following the update, their devices would die out within just a few minutes after taking it out from the charger.
Eligible Pixel 4a users as a result was provided an appeasement from Google as well, allowing them to either get the problem fixed (free battery replacement), payment refund (USD 50), or get a discount coupon (USD 100, Google Store Discount).
