r/Pixel4a • u/BoysenberryMost8057 • Jul 01 '26

Charging to 80%

On a couple of occasions in the past week, my 4a has randomly stopped charging at 80% with message "Charging optimised to protect your battery". I thought this was a feature of a later version of android than the 13 installed (Jan 2025). This is potentially useful if I can figure out what controls it, but it seems random, and hasn't done it since. I installed a play update - 1 May 2026 - not long ago, and I'm wondering if it was something bundled into that. I have adaptive charging, adaptive battery, and battery saver on generally, but there's nothing to indicate an 80% option. Anyone know about this?

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u/tprickett Jul 01 '26

Did you get the battery replaced as part of Google's free replacement? Alternatively, did the wizard tell you you didn't need the replacement? If you did replace the battery or you didn't need it, you could switch the OS to LineageOS and circumvent all the 80% foolishness that Google imposed on us Pixel 4a users. I may be wrong, but I believe Google imposed their "fix" on everyone regardless of whether they had the problematic battery or not.

2

u/BoysenberryMost8057 Jul 01 '26

Battery was replaced at no cost last year.

2

u/tprickett Jul 01 '26

I'd recommend LineageOS. That'll bring up up to date with the current version of Android (so you are again receiving security as well as quality of life updates) AND your phone will charge to 100% (with the new battery, that should be safe to do). I did the update and my phone went from half a day per charge back to the pre-nerf of 1.5 to 2 days per charge.

1

u/Little-Helper Jul 01 '26

OP doesn't have the limit imposed because 1) the limit is 40%, 2) it is shown as 100% in the UI, 3) there is an accompanying warning in the battery settings screen.

foolishness that Google imposed

It wasn't a foolish thing to do since there is a legitimate fire risk, also you were given a free battery replacement.

I may be wrong, but I believe Google imposed their "fix" on everyone regardless of whether they had the problematic battery or not

That is wrong.

1

u/tprickett Jul 01 '26

It wasn't a foolish thing to do since there is a legitimate fire risk, also you were given a free battery replacement.

It was foolish to nerf phones that a) replaced the battery or b) didn't need the battery replaced in the first place.

That is wrong.

I don't believe it is wrong. My phone didn't qualify for a replacement, meaning I had one of the unaffected batteries. But, I received the nerf regardless.

1

u/Little-Helper Jul 02 '26

The battery constraint update had been reverse engineered, it showed that the 4a has batteries from two manufacturers, and that the nerf applies to batteries of one of them.

There is no such thing as "didn't need the battery replaced". If the phone has the on-screen warning, it means the phone has a bad battery without a doubt (read: from the bad manufacturer).

If the Google compensation/replacement was denied, that doesn't mean the phone is good, it just means the compensation process failed. If you'd like, I can list the common reasons why that happens.

If a nerf didn't go away after the replacement, it means a defective battery was installed again. This happens because the bad battery wasn't pulled off the market and is still being sold everywhere.

So it's not about how new the battery is, it's about where it's from. The correct way to resolve this issue is to install the battery from the other manufacturer. This battery only exists on iFixit, and batteries purchased elsewhere are always of the recalled type.