- Google Pixel 9A telephones come with a new tool for health assistance
- It will intentionally drop your phone’s maximum battery life every 200 charging cycles
- It turns off after 1,000 fees and you can’t turn it off until then
Google Pixel 9A has a new feature that intentionally reduces your phone’s battery life over time – and there’s nothing you can do about it.
While they are never the most exciting features, battery health tools are some of the most useful ones you find on modern smartphones. The following best practices can ensure that your phone does not become a massive battery sink after a year or two use and can expand how long you can go before buying a replacement lithium-ion cell for your handset.
And with its latest Google Pixel 9A release, Google seems to take battery health seriously with a new battery health assistance feature that (at launch) will be exclusive to the new handset.
But rather than giving you a choice about how your phone charges – such as manual setting your device to cut off the charge of 80%, or only when a full charge just before your phone expects you to unplug – according to Google’s official help with the battery -health assistance, automatically lowers the battery’s maximum charge every 200 charging bikes.
This gradual decline continues every 200 cycles until your device ends 1,000 cycles.
What’s more, while Google has confirmed to 9to5Google that the “will be volunteer for all customers who use previously launched devices” (ie the other best Google Pixel phones) is the Auxiliary page to Pixel 9A reveals that for its latest “Battery Health Assistance Settings on Pixel 9A cannot be adapted by the user.”
Now, some of you may be worried that this will mean that your Google Pixel 9A is running out of battery faster than if you could turn off this feature, but the silver lining here is that this feature is likely to mean that your phone battery will last longer.
Over time, most batteries are broken down anyway, so 100% charging after several months will not last as long as it did when the phone was brand new.
The hope is that while you still lose some battery services over time, Google’s controlled descent will mean that your battery will last longer per day. Fee than it would do if you didn’t use battery health aid.
While we can understand that the lack of control over how to manage your device is likely to rub many in the wrong way, even if it is an upgrade. Nor does it do much to dampen concerns about intentional performance that throttling from smartphone manufacturers to encourage you to upgrade your smartphone more regularly.
It seems that this feature is an upgrade in disguise, and if it is a success, we will probably see that it will appear on other Google smartphones in the future.
