I don't know what's wrong. Maybe an app that runs too much when it shouldn't? I know that the Facebook app used to be a battery killer roughly a decade ago.
The battery on the Pixel 6a should be good enough to make the phone run a whole day with no problem. It's almost exactly the same size as the battery in my iPhone 16e that has excellent battery life.
My iPhone, when it was new, 3 and a half years ago, could handle two days, while I used it heavily, with hotspot on for hours at places where signal was terrible. GPS was almost always on. And I used it heavily because I was on the go a lot. Two years later it couldn’t handle 12 hours if I use hotspot the same way for half the time as before, because I travel less, and even for that I needed to optimize already some apps.
My watch could handle a day (about 22 hours) with occasional direct network access. Nowadays, that’s out of the question. I cannot use it for the night, only if I charge it twice per day. I bought the exact same time as the iPhone.
I bought a beefy laptop two years ago. I used it with some battery saving option, and never charged more than 80%. I could use it for about 4 hours on battery. At first. Then now, I already can use it an hour less than back then with the same usage.
All of these devices lie to me, that I lost less than 20% of battery health. Where in reality it’s somewhere between 25-50%, and when they wouldn’t pretend that maximum output is any way a good indicator of the real battery life, aka how long you can use a device.
And yeah, apps. If we pretend that I don’t have misbehaving apps all the time. The difference is, that when I bought these devices, I could ignore them completely.
> All of these devices lie to me, that I lost less than 20% of battery health. Where in reality it’s somewhere between 25-50%, and when they wouldn’t pretend that maximum output is any way a good indicator of the real battery life, aka how long you can use a device.
FWIW, I've only directly witnessed this so far on Oneplus devices, others have remarked the health gauge on these seem to use gacha mechanics where health % will be all over the place. (like >10% variability). I have theories as to why this happens, it's in firmware not OS as LineageOS shows same behavior.... but tough to really know for sure if this was by design or not.
Oh and charge thresholds only do so much, heat kills batteries reliably fast. Deep discharges under 20% or so seem to run more risk of electrolyte breakdown. Don't fear fast charge in bulk charge range, it causes less wear than other factors. I slammed the 65W charge into my 8T's and still got years of >80% battery, replacement wasn't too hard to do on these.
I'm starting to think there's some variation / luck of the dray to these things. My iPhone 14 pro is like what you describe: when new, it held a great charge; now, not so much. But my HP laptops have the "limit charge to 80%" thing, and the battery held up very well. I don't use those laptops on battery very often, but they usually last several hours. They were rated for 5 hours I think, so it's close enough.
I'd really love to know the reasoning behind not allowing this charge-limit thing to older iPhones, since AFAIK the 15 and up have it.
Pixels have lasted about 1 year for me historically (I started with the first pixel and had every other one in the lineup, now the 10). It forced me to buy new ones. ETA 1 year of battery before it noticeably degrades.
I might be doing something wrong, but battery life always degraded for me. I've even bought the same Pixel on eBay when it stopped being sold by Google, so I can save money on buying the latest.
My Pixel 8 had to be replaced because the screen starting randomly detecting presses in a spasmic fury, which would happen with no known correlation.
There are NO new features worth getting on the new Pixels. I love taking photos - insider tip - huge megapixel sensors don't make better photos.
I liked the pixels that had the fingerprint sensor on the back best
Years ago I had and loved the Samsung phones with replaceable batteries.
I buy new ones because they make me, not because I chase as aesthetic novelty like a stereotypical Apple consumer.
