Erratic battery life

[MarkA67]

I've just bought a used Pixel XL but I seem to be having issues with insane battery life. I charged the phone to 100% and unplugged it, it literally dropped 1% every 60-90 seconds. I charged it again and turned it off over night, when I woke up and turned it on it was on 4%

I did a search and found a thread with hundreds of posts about people experiencing fast discharge after upgrading to A10 specifically on Pixel devices... I therefore unlocked the bootloader and installed factory A9 on the phone but that didn't solve my issue either.

I charged it again yesterday, it was connected to a 3A charger for about 4 hours and it went from 12% to 62% and again the battery life dropped by 1% every 60-90 seconds (I had to unplug the phone as I needed the charger)

I turned the screen off at 50% last night, and about 9 hours later I checked and it was still on 50% (despite previous times when left idle the battery would still drop dramatically fast)

I then rebooted the phone thinking it was a glitch and the battery dropped to 8% from 50%. I rebooted it AGAIN and it went from 8% to 16% so as you can see extremely erratic!

I turned it back on and let the phone turn itself off due to a dead battery. I plugged it in whilst the phone was off and the little white battery icon you see whilst charging and off shows it having half a battery (in fact as I type this, its gone from half a battery to 3/4 of a battery) despite the phone turning off because it was dead.

I've tried a few battery health apps that all report the battery health as "good". I've read something about battery calibration, from what I've described does it seem like it could be a software issue requiring recalibration rather than a knackered battery?

Obviously the Pixel only came out in October 2016 so at the very most the battery is only just over 3 years old

 

[B. Diddy]

Welcome to Android Central! It just sounds like the battery has deteriorated due to prior usage patterns. A 3 year old battery can significantly lose its ability to hold its charge over this time if it hasn't been cared for (typically if the user lets it discharge it deeply on a regular basis). I don't quite trust battery health apps to tell the whole story.

Did you buy it factory refurbished/recertified, or was this a private seller? If the former, it should have a limited warranty (30-90 days). If the latter, then the best you can do is take it to a repair shop for battery replacement. Sorry!

 

[MarkA67]

I bought it from a second hand shop, it's supposed to have a 90 day warranty but they are yet to reply to my emails. I don't mind getting the battery replaced as it will pay for itself with the Unlimited Forever Photo backup. My worry is paying for it and finding out that it doesn't fix my issue.

Are there any other tests I can perform to rule out software issues?

 

[B. Diddy]

See if the battery problems exist in Safe Mode. If so, then it's probably a hardware issue, most likely the battery. https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2852139?hl=en

 

[J Dubbs]

I bought it from a second hand shop, it's supposed to have a 90 day warranty but they are yet to reply to my emails. I don't mind getting the battery replaced as it will pay for itself with the Unlimited Forever Photo backup. My worry is paying for it and finding out that it doesn't fix my issue.

Are there any other tests I can perform to rule out software issues?

Try factory resetting it and don't restore anything, if the problem goes away it was a software or app problem, if it doesn't it's a battery problem. Unfortunately this has bad battery written all over it. The original pixels can be very solid phones that can last for years, and the hardware is still higher spec even by today's standards (the Oculus Go stand-alone vr headset is still running the same 821 snapdragon chipset that came in the original pixels). If the phone is in good shape otherwise, with no other issues, and you can't get the shop to honor the warranty, I'd replace the battery and use the heck out of it ;-)