13 ms·

Some Google Pixel devices shutting down at 30% battery

127 points by sergiotapia 10y ago

cft 10y ago
When my Nexus 6 shuts down at 25%, I can turn it back on, and it still shows 23% after that. And it does seem to be temperature dependent. So I think it has to do with battery monitoring.
- digi_owl 10y ago
  Quite likely. My understanding is that battery capacity is measured based on the voltage drops as the mah runs low. Thing is that temperature affects resistance and thus observed voltage (digital thermometer work on this principle, afaik). Could be that Google has set the cutoff a bit high, and momentary chills result in a too early shutdown (possibly to avoid data loss or some such).
  - azernik 10y ago
    More likely to avoid battery damage - undervoltage can cause permanent damage to both cathode and anode (from another thread here - http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm)
scosman 10y ago
Yet another featured copied from Apple...
mmastrac 10y ago
Is this a similar issue to the one that seems to be plaguing iPhones as well [1]? Is this bad charge controllers or bad batteries? [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-statement-on-iphone-shutdown-issue-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-statement-on-iphone-shu...
- eridius 10y ago
  That link you gave says that the iPhone problem was due to bad batteries.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  Or is everybody paranoid about batteries after the Samsung recall?
  - Tloewald 10y ago
    Perhaps battery controller software has been tweaked in some kind of more conservative direction.
    - russdill 10y ago
      One of the failure modes for lithium ion is overdischarge. a Recovering a battery that has been overdischarged is difficult and sometimes impossible. This seems super over conservative though http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm
PaulHoule 10y ago
Android on Google devices is a joke. I have a new Nexus 7 that sometimes turns on and off correctly and sometimes does not. I see articles on how great the power management is going to be on Android N+1 but I think the people who write them run iOS because if they ran Android they'd be telling google to make the power button work right first.
- TD-Linux 10y ago
  Same thing on my Nexus 7, plus the orientation doesn't always work (these things broke in updates, I believe). Of course now the two years of updates are gone. I could have bought a Nexus 9 when these problems cropped up, but if I had I would have had four months of official updates (Nexus 9 discontinued in June, official updates ended in October)
  - puzzle 10y ago
    I think something happens to the orientation sensor after the tablet has been running for days or weeks. On mine, it doesn't work again until after a reboot.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Em what? Nexus 9 just received the Android 7.1.1 update, the same latest version as Pixels and other devices run.
    - TD-Linux 10y ago
      They only guarantee it until October 2016 according to this website: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en I guess they are extending support for it.
- mustacheemperor 10y ago
  Honestly, it's starting to feel like Android on a lot of devices is a joke, as far as the hardware experience. I've always been a passionate fan of the OS and anti-walled garden, but the daily frustrations of using my S6, a year old "flagship" phone, kind of makes me question what the advantages really are. It's so frustrating to hold an $800+ device while my home screen slowly populates with app icons, the back becoming scorching hot while the battery life visibly ticks down from the load. How does this phone have such grotesque memory management problems that running Maps and Spotify at the same time is enough to grind it to a crawl? Battery life has gradually decreased over time to the point that some days the phone is at 38% by lunchtime after primarily sitting in my pocket all morning. At this point the single most advantageous aspect of Android for me is the voice assistant - tasker seems nice, but I can't charge my phone four times a day. Nova launcher is cool, but I'd much rather be able to text my family without watching the keyboard lag out. Even the voice assistant has random, arbitrary issues - for some reason, saying "play ___ album on spotify" now only selects the album without playing it, or shuffle plays it out of the search. Makes it that much worse to see Cyanogen disintegrating. Somebody needs to push for higher quality at the state of the art.
acconrad 10y ago
This isn't just on Pixels, I have a 6P that will turn off early as well, and I'd hazard a guess it has more to do with the latest Android versions than the specific hardware.
- usloth_wandows 10y ago
  I'm in the same situation! It seems to be triggered by temperature change, but not sure.
- Meegul 10y ago
  Same here. Originally, it would get to 5% then shut down, but it's gotten progressively worse. The highest I've had it shut down at now is ~20%. My first guess was that it's an issue of battery degradation not being properly accounted for, but the news about (new) Pixels suffering from the same problem makes it seem like that's unlikely. Hopefully this issue is resolved via an update, because I'd feel somewhat guilty recommending the Pixel to people weary of Samsung phones only to have major issues arise.
- masklinn 10y ago
  > some Pixel devices are affected by the same infamous shutdown bug that plagued the Nexus 6P
- choward 10y ago
  I've been running 6.0.1 on my 6P for a while now. I hear so many people complaining about battery life after updating. Battery life and reliably is the most important feature to me. I haven't had the 30% battery issue and my battery life is great.
- Twirrim 10y ago
  I had this on a Moto X after just over 15 months of use. I think it was only a slightly degraded battery lifetime at that point. Likewise, I'm guessing this has something to do with battery measurement as much as anything else.
  - jrs235 10y ago
boterock 10y ago
I got a Moto E 2nd gen (2015) and I also have the same issue sometimes with CM14 nightlies, so I would definitely consider it a software issue.
mschuster91 10y ago
My new Samsung Tab S2 does this too, it sometimes shuty down with 10% remaining. Seriously, looks like battery management isn't exactly the strength of today's device manufacturers -.-
mancerayder 10y ago
It's strange irony that I happened on this link after searching around for a replacement for my 5X, and heading back to HackerNews for a little break. The 5X has slowed to a crawl after a year of use, and the battery is a catastrophe, requiring me to remember to not forget my anker portable battery, which I also have to remember to not forget to keep charged. I bought the iPhone 7 but the reception on it was so awful, I'm returning it. I've been looking at alternatives and the landscape is ugly: the Samsung S7 has rave reviews but we all know they don't update the software with any attempt at haste or frequency. The Pixel is beyond a joke, given its high pricepoint with a featureset that has 'Google Assistant' as the top bulletpoint. What in the world happened to the phone market that the choices have gotten so dismal? We used to have more variety. We used to have swappable batteries, keyboards, etc. Now it's all the same garbage with designs copied between the hardware vendors. I'm baffled.
- johnatwork 10y ago
  What about the OnePlus? I'm happy with my iPhone 6S, but I would switch to that if the next iPhone isn't to my taste. A couple of my friends have it, and they seem to love the fast charge ability.
  - guitarbill 10y ago
    The OnePlus phones are amazingly good. I loved my OnePlus X, e.g. OLED display is stunning. I honestly think the hardware is better than Apple. But I still switched back to my old iPhone 5. So make sure you don't find Android frustrating. (e.g. be prepared that security updates take far longer than on Nexus')
- PaulKeeble 10y ago
  There is a bug in the update process that can cause the phone to slow and drain battery like crazy. Doing a reset might clear it up. Its a pain but I did the same thing a couple of times through the various updates and now its behaving as it should for about 6 months.
- chaosmonkey 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dorianm 10y ago
Maybe it's the cold weather, as it's happening to iPhones as well
koolba 10y ago
Every iPhone that I've ever had exhibits this after 12-15 months. I think it has to do with the number of charge cycles it's been put through.
dajohnson89 10y ago
I was going to buy a Google Pixel C laptop, but there were reports of really bad wifi performance. Looks like I have yet another reason to pass :/. If the Phone is having basic problems like battery life, I don't have loads of confidence in the laptop.
nradov 10y ago
I have seen the same symptom on Samsung devices with degraded batteries. With a new battery it will go all the way to 0% before shutting down. Then as the battery gradually degrades it will shut down with no warning at 5%, 10%, 20%, and so on. But when you get close to that limit the point where it actually shuts down depends heavily on power consumption at the time. It might have been able to keep running fine for a while but as soon as you launch a power intensive app such as the camera it will immediately die. My theory is that the degraded battery is still able to deliver enough power at full charge. But then as it discharges the maximum amount of power it can deliver gradually declines. This works fine for a while until it hits a threshold, and then a protection circuit trips to prevent further damage to the battery by shutting down. Of course if you have a removable battery this is only a momentary inconvenience. Just slap in a fresh one and you're working again in less than 1 minute.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  >Of course if you have a removable battery this is only a momentary inconvenience. Just slap in a fresh one and you're working again in less than 1 minute. Assuming you have an extra removable battery charged and on your person at the time, and you still need to shutdown your device to do it. And assuming you want to either juggle charging multiple batteries in the phone, or you get an external charger.
  - nradov 10y ago
    The batteries are small and easy to stick in a pocket. External chargers cost only a few dollars. It's really easy to deal with, much more convenient than carrying an external battery that you then have to plug into your phone's USB port to recharge the internal battery.
    - Klathmon 10y ago
      I can't say I agree in the slightest. From only being able to provide power to a single device, handling a battery which is not meant to be handled that way (don't puncture or bend that, or have it touch anything which could cause a short), and charging it outside what it was designed to be charged in (i'd be extremely wary of using a few-dollar external battery charger...), carrying extra internal batteries is a much worse experience. IMO modern fast-charging is significantly better (at least to me). Being able to charge up 50% in like 15 minutes is huge. And if that's not available, external battery packs are not only safer to carry, but can hold more juice, work on multiple devices (even at once), and are easier to recharge. That being said, I think manufacturers could make it easier to change out batteries in phones even with non-removable batteries (in other words, make one-time replacements easier to do on your own). But I just don't see having to carry multiple batteries with you as a good solution.
raindev 10y ago
It seems to me like most of the problems of modern tech are related to quality yet everyone is rushing for new features and quantitative "improvements".
darpa_escapee 10y ago
My Galaxy S6 does this as well. Once it drops below 15% there is no telling when it will decide to shutdown.
st3fan 10y ago
That is what my iPhone 6s Plus does too.
seltzered_ 10y ago
Had a similar issue on a galaxy s4 in cold weather (particularly when launching the camera app). The battery was ~3+ years old though. After doing several hours research into buying a new phone (iphones and androids), I settled for now on upgrading the battery in my old phone to a larger 5200 mAh battery. It introduces a slight bulge, but after the first few weeks I've been extremely happy so far. The phone works 2 days under heavy use, 3+ under light use, and changed how I perceive it - essentially I don't think about charging during the day anymore, and don't worry about remembering to charge at night / while catching up on news in bed. My assumption is that this is a better solution because it's drawing current from more cells in parallel, meaning less strain on the battery itself (there's an equation for this, but basically more current on individual cells drains a battery's capacity exponentially faster). It's also one less thing to think about carrying compared to carrying a separate usb charger. I'm hoping there's still going to be phones with removable batteries to enable larger 3rd party ones to be installed, or that 'smart battery packs' on the iphone or moto z someday allow for current sharing between the internal+addon batteries.
geoffreyhale 10y ago
And my iPhone shut down at 30% last night.

127 points by sergiotapia 10y ago

cft 10y ago

When my Nexus 6 shuts down at 25%, I can turn it back on, and it still shows 23% after that. And it does seem to be temperature dependent. So I think it has to do with battery monitoring.

digi_owl 10y ago
Quite likely. My understanding is that battery capacity is measured based on the voltage drops as the mah runs low. Thing is that temperature affects resistance and thus observed voltage (digital thermometer work on this principle, afaik). Could be that Google has set the cutoff a bit high, and momentary chills result in a too early shutdown (possibly to avoid data loss or some such).
- azernik 10y ago
  More likely to avoid battery damage - undervoltage can cause permanent damage to both cathode and anode (from another thread here - http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm)

scosman 10y ago

Yet another featured copied from Apple...

mmastrac 10y ago

Is this a similar issue to the one that seems to be plaguing iPhones as well [1]? Is this bad charge controllers or bad batteries? [1] http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-statement-on-iphone-shutdown-issue-2016-12 http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-statement-on-iphone-shu...

eridius 10y ago
That link you gave says that the iPhone problem was due to bad batteries.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Or is everybody paranoid about batteries after the Samsung recall?
- Tloewald 10y ago
  Perhaps battery controller software has been tweaked in some kind of more conservative direction.
  - russdill 10y ago
    One of the failure modes for lithium ion is overdischarge. a Recovering a battery that has been overdischarged is difficult and sometimes impossible. This seems super over conservative though http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm http://www.mpoweruk.com/lithium_failures.htm

PaulHoule 10y ago

Android on Google devices is a joke. I have a new Nexus 7 that sometimes turns on and off correctly and sometimes does not. I see articles on how great the power management is going to be on Android N+1 but I think the people who write them run iOS because if they ran Android they'd be telling google to make the power button work right first.

TD-Linux 10y ago
Same thing on my Nexus 7, plus the orientation doesn't always work (these things broke in updates, I believe). Of course now the two years of updates are gone. I could have bought a Nexus 9 when these problems cropped up, but if I had I would have had four months of official updates (Nexus 9 discontinued in June, official updates ended in October)
- puzzle 10y ago
  I think something happens to the orientation sensor after the tablet has been running for days or weeks. On mine, it doesn't work again until after a reboot.
- izacus 10y ago
  Em what? Nexus 9 just received the Android 7.1.1 update, the same latest version as Pixels and other devices run.
  - TD-Linux 10y ago
    They only guarantee it until October 2016 according to this website: https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/4457705?hl=en I guess they are extending support for it.
mustacheemperor 10y ago
Honestly, it's starting to feel like Android on a lot of devices is a joke, as far as the hardware experience. I've always been a passionate fan of the OS and anti-walled garden, but the daily frustrations of using my S6, a year old "flagship" phone, kind of makes me question what the advantages really are. It's so frustrating to hold an $800+ device while my home screen slowly populates with app icons, the back becoming scorching hot while the battery life visibly ticks down from the load. How does this phone have such grotesque memory management problems that running Maps and Spotify at the same time is enough to grind it to a crawl? Battery life has gradually decreased over time to the point that some days the phone is at 38% by lunchtime after primarily sitting in my pocket all morning. At this point the single most advantageous aspect of Android for me is the voice assistant - tasker seems nice, but I can't charge my phone four times a day. Nova launcher is cool, but I'd much rather be able to text my family without watching the keyboard lag out. Even the voice assistant has random, arbitrary issues - for some reason, saying "play ___ album on spotify" now only selects the album without playing it, or shuffle plays it out of the search. Makes it that much worse to see Cyanogen disintegrating. Somebody needs to push for higher quality at the state of the art.

acconrad 10y ago

This isn't just on Pixels, I have a 6P that will turn off early as well, and I'd hazard a guess it has more to do with the latest Android versions than the specific hardware.

usloth_wandows 10y ago
I'm in the same situation! It seems to be triggered by temperature change, but not sure.
Meegul 10y ago
Same here. Originally, it would get to 5% then shut down, but it's gotten progressively worse. The highest I've had it shut down at now is ~20%. My first guess was that it's an issue of battery degradation not being properly accounted for, but the news about (new) Pixels suffering from the same problem makes it seem like that's unlikely. Hopefully this issue is resolved via an update, because I'd feel somewhat guilty recommending the Pixel to people weary of Samsung phones only to have major issues arise.
masklinn 10y ago
> some Pixel devices are affected by the same infamous shutdown bug that plagued the Nexus 6P
choward 10y ago
I've been running 6.0.1 on my 6P for a while now. I hear so many people complaining about battery life after updating. Battery life and reliably is the most important feature to me. I haven't had the 30% battery issue and my battery life is great.
Twirrim 10y ago
I had this on a Moto X after just over 15 months of use. I think it was only a slightly degraded battery lifetime at that point. Likewise, I'm guessing this has something to do with battery measurement as much as anything else.
- jrs235 10y ago

boterock 10y ago

I got a Moto E 2nd gen (2015) and I also have the same issue sometimes with CM14 nightlies, so I would definitely consider it a software issue.

mschuster91 10y ago

My new Samsung Tab S2 does this too, it sometimes shuty down with 10% remaining. Seriously, looks like battery management isn't exactly the strength of today's device manufacturers -.-

mancerayder 10y ago

It's strange irony that I happened on this link after searching around for a replacement for my 5X, and heading back to HackerNews for a little break. The 5X has slowed to a crawl after a year of use, and the battery is a catastrophe, requiring me to remember to not forget my anker portable battery, which I also have to remember to not forget to keep charged. I bought the iPhone 7 but the reception on it was so awful, I'm returning it. I've been looking at alternatives and the landscape is ugly: the Samsung S7 has rave reviews but we all know they don't update the software with any attempt at haste or frequency. The Pixel is beyond a joke, given its high pricepoint with a featureset that has 'Google Assistant' as the top bulletpoint. What in the world happened to the phone market that the choices have gotten so dismal? We used to have more variety. We used to have swappable batteries, keyboards, etc. Now it's all the same garbage with designs copied between the hardware vendors. I'm baffled.

johnatwork 10y ago
What about the OnePlus? I'm happy with my iPhone 6S, but I would switch to that if the next iPhone isn't to my taste. A couple of my friends have it, and they seem to love the fast charge ability.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  The OnePlus phones are amazingly good. I loved my OnePlus X, e.g. OLED display is stunning. I honestly think the hardware is better than Apple. But I still switched back to my old iPhone 5. So make sure you don't find Android frustrating. (e.g. be prepared that security updates take far longer than on Nexus')
PaulKeeble 10y ago
There is a bug in the update process that can cause the phone to slow and drain battery like crazy. Doing a reset might clear it up. Its a pain but I did the same thing a couple of times through the various updates and now its behaving as it should for about 6 months.
chaosmonkey 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dorianm 10y ago

Maybe it's the cold weather, as it's happening to iPhones as well

koolba 10y ago

Every iPhone that I've ever had exhibits this after 12-15 months. I think it has to do with the number of charge cycles it's been put through.

dajohnson89 10y ago

I was going to buy a Google Pixel C laptop, but there were reports of really bad wifi performance. Looks like I have yet another reason to pass :/. If the Phone is having basic problems like battery life, I don't have loads of confidence in the laptop.

nradov 10y ago

I have seen the same symptom on Samsung devices with degraded batteries. With a new battery it will go all the way to 0% before shutting down. Then as the battery gradually degrades it will shut down with no warning at 5%, 10%, 20%, and so on. But when you get close to that limit the point where it actually shuts down depends heavily on power consumption at the time. It might have been able to keep running fine for a while but as soon as you launch a power intensive app such as the camera it will immediately die. My theory is that the degraded battery is still able to deliver enough power at full charge. But then as it discharges the maximum amount of power it can deliver gradually declines. This works fine for a while until it hits a threshold, and then a protection circuit trips to prevent further damage to the battery by shutting down. Of course if you have a removable battery this is only a momentary inconvenience. Just slap in a fresh one and you're working again in less than 1 minute.

Klathmon 10y ago
>Of course if you have a removable battery this is only a momentary inconvenience. Just slap in a fresh one and you're working again in less than 1 minute. Assuming you have an extra removable battery charged and on your person at the time, and you still need to shutdown your device to do it. And assuming you want to either juggle charging multiple batteries in the phone, or you get an external charger.
- nradov 10y ago
  The batteries are small and easy to stick in a pocket. External chargers cost only a few dollars. It's really easy to deal with, much more convenient than carrying an external battery that you then have to plug into your phone's USB port to recharge the internal battery.
  - Klathmon 10y ago
    I can't say I agree in the slightest. From only being able to provide power to a single device, handling a battery which is not meant to be handled that way (don't puncture or bend that, or have it touch anything which could cause a short), and charging it outside what it was designed to be charged in (i'd be extremely wary of using a few-dollar external battery charger...), carrying extra internal batteries is a much worse experience. IMO modern fast-charging is significantly better (at least to me). Being able to charge up 50% in like 15 minutes is huge. And if that's not available, external battery packs are not only safer to carry, but can hold more juice, work on multiple devices (even at once), and are easier to recharge. That being said, I think manufacturers could make it easier to change out batteries in phones even with non-removable batteries (in other words, make one-time replacements easier to do on your own). But I just don't see having to carry multiple batteries with you as a good solution.

raindev 10y ago

It seems to me like most of the problems of modern tech are related to quality yet everyone is rushing for new features and quantitative "improvements".

darpa_escapee 10y ago

My Galaxy S6 does this as well. Once it drops below 15% there is no telling when it will decide to shutdown.

st3fan 10y ago

That is what my iPhone 6s Plus does too.

seltzered_ 10y ago

Had a similar issue on a galaxy s4 in cold weather (particularly when launching the camera app). The battery was ~3+ years old though. After doing several hours research into buying a new phone (iphones and androids), I settled for now on upgrading the battery in my old phone to a larger 5200 mAh battery. It introduces a slight bulge, but after the first few weeks I've been extremely happy so far. The phone works 2 days under heavy use, 3+ under light use, and changed how I perceive it - essentially I don't think about charging during the day anymore, and don't worry about remembering to charge at night / while catching up on news in bed. My assumption is that this is a better solution because it's drawing current from more cells in parallel, meaning less strain on the battery itself (there's an equation for this, but basically more current on individual cells drains a battery's capacity exponentially faster). It's also one less thing to think about carrying compared to carrying a separate usb charger. I'm hoping there's still going to be phones with removable batteries to enable larger 3rd party ones to be installed, or that 'smart battery packs' on the iphone or moto z someday allow for current sharing between the internal+addon batteries.

geoffreyhale 10y ago

And my iPhone shut down at 30% last night.