It appears Google is about to issue a major update to the Pixel 6a mid-range phone that could well adversely affect its battery life.
Google has posted news of a Pixel 6a Battery Performance Program to its support pages, and it looks worryingly familiar.
Pixel 6a battery update
The post outlines a “mandatory software update to reduce the risk of potential battery overheating” for certain Pixel 6a handsets, which will commence rolling out on 8 July 8 2025 (that’s next week).
While the update will be pushed out to all Pixel 6a devices, only those affected devices running particular components will receive what Google is calling “battery-management features”.
Dominik Tomaszewski / Foundry
We all like new features, of course, but that’s a rather positive spin to put on an update that will actively hamper certain handsets, albeit in the name of safety. It seems this compulsory update will serve to reduce battery capacity and charging performance after the battery reaches 400 charge cycles.
Google is also offering a range support options for affected Pixel 6a users, which might entail a repair at no cost to you, a cash payment, or a Google Store hardware discount credit, depending on location and warranty status.
The company has even pre-empted those hands-on tech types with a mind to flashing their trusty Pixel 6as with unaffected firmware. As spotted by Droid Life, Google has deleted all Pixel 6a firmware images from its stable release pages, as well as any beta pages.
Pixel 4a: a warning from (very recent) history
Following well-documented battery overheating issues with some Pixel 4a handsets back in March, Google issued a similar ‘fix’ that served to dramatically reduce the battery capacity of certain Pixel 4a models.
As noted above, we’ve seen this from Google before – and quite recently at that.

Foundry
In that case, it seems any batterie from vendor Lishen were faulty, and needed to be dropped from 4.45V to 3.95V to prevent overheating. Some users reported massively accelerated battery drain as a result, with capacity dropping by a staggering 56%.
Google’s reporting of this overheating issue even prompted the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission to recall the 2020 mid-ranger.
Suffice to say, this new measure will likely serve to drop the battery life of affected Pixel 6a handsets from “solid” (in our original reviewer’s words) to “utter garbage” (in my own highly speculative words). With the impressive Pixel 9a now here, it might finally be time for that upgrade.