Pixel 3a - Battery Drain While Turned Off

[maplepants]

Hello friends,

 

I'm a mobile developer who's recently started to need to support Android. To do this, I bought myself a Pixel 3a for my test phone. Generally, it's a pretty bad user experience but the thing that really burns me is that the phone uses battery while it's off. I charged up my phone on Friday and then turned it off. Monday has now rolled around, and even though it was off all weekend the battery is dead. 

 

Is this normal? How can the phone use so much battery power when it's turned off? A quick google shows other people experiencing this problem but no solutions. Has anyone here had/solved this problem before?

[avg123]

why did you buy a 2 year old phone? the pixel 5a was just released.

if such a issue has not been fixed in 2 years, its never going to get fixed.

[maplepants]

16 minutes ago, avg123 said:

why did you buy a 2 year old phone? the pixel 5a was just released.

if such a issue has not been fixed in 2 years, its never going to get fixed.

Are 2 year old Android phones really expected to be this bad? My test iPhone is an iPhone 7 (5 years old) and it works flawlessly.

 

I picked the Pixel 3a because it's supposed to get Android 12 support, and so I thought that meant the phone was still supported by Google.

[avg123]

5 minutes ago, maplepants said:

Are 2 year old Android phones really expected to be this bad? My test iPhone is an iPhone 7 (5 years old) and it works flawlessly.

 

I picked the Pixel 3a because it's supposed to get Android 12 support, and so I thought that meant the phone was still supported by Google.

not all android phones but early pixels had many issues. some were fixed. some were never fixed.

the pixel 3a was a particular lemon.

google does provide longer software support than most manufacturers, so you get the latest updates, but the phones themselves have a lot of quality control issues.

the newer pixel devices are a lot better.

 

[maplepants]

9 minutes ago, avg123 said:

not all android phones but early pixels had many issues. some were fixed. some were never fixed.

the pixel 3a was a particular lemon.

google does provide longer software support than most manufacturers, so you get the latest updates, but the phones themselves have a lot of quality control issues.

the newer pixel devices are a lot better.

 

Brutal. When I last worked on Android, I used a Nexus 4 and then a Nexus 6P as my test phones. They were also bad, and the excuse was that "they're early phones, don't worry it'll get better" at that time too.

 

Obviously I'm not trying to give you personally a hard time (unless you're actually in charge of Google's phone strategy, in which case: dude, wtf?). But it's pretty rough that Google's been making Android phones for over 10 years and they're still having growing pains. 

[avg123]

3 minutes ago, maplepants said:

Brutal. When I last worked on Android, I used a Nexus 4 and then a Nexus 6P as my test phones. They were also bad, and the excuse was that "they're early phones, don't worry it'll get better" at that time too.

 

Obviously I'm not trying to give you personally a hard time (unless you're actually in charge of Google's phone strategy, in which case: dude, wtf?). But it's pretty rough that Google's been making Android phones for over 10 years and they're still having growing pains. 

lol I dont work for google.

google is now designing their own soc and the latest pixel 6 will have a custom google silicon, just like apple makes their own soc.

maybe that will better.

[maplepants]

6 minutes ago, avg123 said:

lol I dont work for google.

google is now designing their own soc and the latest pixel 6 will have a custom google silicon, just like apple makes their own soc.

maybe that will better.

They've certainly got room to improve, lol. 

[v0id]

3a owner here. That is definitely not my experience when it comes to the battery. It doesn't last near as long as it used to, but when off it'll only drop a few percentage points over a weekend (it's not my daily driver, just a backup). Honestly it's a solid phone all around, unless of course you happen to get one with issues. I've been pretty lucky with the phones from Google, at least so far, all the bugs and crazy shit that plagues them just hasn't effected me...yet.

 

So idk OP, maybe you just got a bad battery? You could try a factory reset, I here that 'calibrates' the battery to some degree, not sure how much truth there is to that but I've heard of improvements to battery life after a good reset.