- Over a year after software support ended, Google has a new update coming for the Pixel 4a.
- While the update is intended to improve battery performance, on some hardware Google expects it to have the opposite affect.
- Impacted devices are eligible for either battery replacements or monetary compensation.
Smartphones come and smartphones go, and while some manufacturers promise years and years of support for their latest models, that wasn’t always the case. While a modern Pixel phone is due for seven whole years of software support, that’s only been the situation since the Pixel 8 series, with Pixel 6 and 7 phones only getting five years. But today we’re turning back the clock even further, as Google starts showing some uncharacteristic attention to a Pixel model we had long considered abandoned.
We’re talking about the Pixel 4a, which launched back in 2020. Followed shortly thereafter by the Pixel 4a 5G, these represented some of our favorite budget-conscious Android picks at the time. By early 2022, though, Google had stopped Pixel 4a sales, and platform updates finally ended in the fall of 2023 with the release of Android 14, and the Pixel 4a remaining behind on Android 13.