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Comment by KORraN | Hacker News Reader

Great comment, even though I'm concerned whether my Pixel is a ticking bomb now. The update has been downloaded to my device, but before installing it, I decided to check Reddit and found out the battery issues. Since then, I'm dismissing the update prompt, praying to not miss-click.

The article got it wrong - even before the update has been published, Google already sent e-mail to registered users with a note that the upcoming update may reduce battery life and offered either battery replacement or money: https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/15701861 But the results people post are way beyond anyone expected.

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Google products have consistently been timebombs. I recall the Nexus 7 which had storage that would grind to an unusable halt after a few years.

They don't have the culture or the integration to properly support old devices the way Apple can. Everyone vilified Apple for CPU governers that extended device life by underclocking instead of browning out... this is the kind of behavior that would have deserved the backlash they got.

But the bar is so low with Google and Android devices in general that the outrage will be limited.

https://9to5google.com/2025/01/30/pixel-android-voluntary-ex...

> Google today announced a “voluntary exit program” for employees working in the Platforms & Devices group.

As if to make my point.

The Dev options have a setting to not apply updates on reboot. I'm hoping that'll work if I forget.

I can say from experience that it doesn't. I get daily notifications & popups telling me that I'm X days out of date.

Supposedly, I've removed downloaded update using instructions from https://wiki.rossmanngroup.com/wiki/Pixel_4a_Battery_Perform... - hopefully this will stop popups:

>Users can delete an already downloaded (and not yet installed) update: Settings -> Apps -> All Apps -> Google Play Services -> Storage and cache -> Manage Space and from there on delete all data through the "Clear all data" button.

> I can say from experience that it doesn't.

No, I don't think you can say that. If you're getting daily notifications about being out of date, then you clearly haven't gotten the update yet. There are two possibilities: (1) You have rebooted. In this case, the dev option must have worked, because you rebooted and didn't get the update, exactly what the dev option promised. (2) You haven't rebooted. In this case, the dev option doesn't apply, because it specifically refers to what happens after you reboot.

If you're rooted you can turn (most of) these off.

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