Earlier quoted context omitted.
What? For what purpose? I've never heard of or encountered this.
as others mention ticket master seems to do this for some venues and events
As if I needed another reason to hate Ticketmaster.
Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
281–290 of 370 posts
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can tell which battery you have physically by the number next to the QR code. 8230015901 is ATL (good) and 8230020501 is LSN (bad). If you're replacing your battery, make sure it's ATL. Where do I find this info on my phone?
You can run this: adb shell cat /sys/class/power_supply/battery/serial_number Requires adb: https://developer.android.com/tools/adb
Merci! Yep looks like my phone is affected. I guess using lineage means it's safe?
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
apple is an advertising company too. what's the alternative?
Apple is no where near as invasive as Google. Most sites on the Internet phone home to Google. Here are some examples: https://securepubads.g.doubleclick.net/ https://news.google.com/swg/js/v1/swg.js - I found these on the Washington Post's web site. https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/opensans/v20/cJZKeOuBrn4kERxqtaU... https://www.googletagmanager.com/static/service_worker/51n0/... - I found these on New Egg's home page. h…
You will get tracked by those even if you use an Apple device. The key difference between Android and iOS is that Android gives users the ability not to be tracked. iOS (even MacOS) doesn't even let you uninstall Apple News. iOS won't let you get your location or install an app without telling Apple. It won't even let you run a browser other than Safari, which has known data leaking vulnerabilities. User control is the key privacy feature.
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#284Hi, (soon to be ex) Pixel 4a user here. Regardless of why this update has happened, the way Google have went about this update is sketchy at best, and deceitful at worst. To be plain: this phone has been EOL for 1½ years now. This update has appeared out of the blue and specifically decimates the battery + charging capabilities. My most charitable view is that Google have found a major fault with the Pixel 4a battery…
Unless your Pixel 4a is from Verizon (locked), keep it. Unlock the bootloader, then install LineageOS, MindTheGapps, and Magisk. Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%. That should solve your problems, and turn the updates back on. I don't think there is a way to make Google Pay work in this configuration, which is a drawback. I can put all…
[deleted]
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#285Stuff like this is part of why I stick with iPhone. The Pixel 4A stopped receiving security updates just 3 years after release, and rather than being direct about what battery changes were made and providing reasonable pathways for people to replace batteries, this happens. Apple does stupid and shady stuff too, it is certainly not perfect, but Google has always had a cultural attitude permeating their organization s…
Apple literally did the exact same thing with limiting battery limits on iPhone 6 and got sued for it. C'mon.
No, they did not. They slowed down the CPU in order to reduce battery consumption via throttling, which changed the performance of the iPhone device to compensate for a bad battery. It's not the same thing, and yes they did get sued for it and lost, and yes it's an example of what I mean by Apple having done shady things also.
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#286Hi, (soon to be ex) Pixel 4a user here. Regardless of why this update has happened, the way Google have went about this update is sketchy at best, and deceitful at worst. To be plain: this phone has been EOL for 1½ years now. This update has appeared out of the blue and specifically decimates the battery + charging capabilities. My most charitable view is that Google have found a major fault with the Pixel 4a battery…
Unless your Pixel 4a is from Verizon (locked), keep it. Unlock the bootloader, then install LineageOS, MindTheGapps, and Magisk. Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%. That should solve your problems, and turn the updates back on. I don't think there is a way to make Google Pay work in this configuration, which is a drawback. I can put all…
Problem with pretty much every modern battery-powered device is that battery is flogged to near death at every charge. From @marcan's mastodon post, Pixel 4a's battery is charged to 4.45V:
qcom,max-voltage-uv = ;
As for charge limiting... limit at 80% is an okay workaround (certainly better than no limit at all!), but it's far from perfect. Namely, with this approach, charge controller chip doesn't know cut-off is coming, and will shove several amperes into the battery until last second, thus overshooting safe voltage level. This wears the battery (less so than with no limit, but still more than necessary).
Battery charging limiting should be done by voltage: this way, controller chip knows where to stop, so it makes soft taper-off at the end of charge cycle, by gradually nudging current down to stay within voltage envelope.
Charging profile could be observed from a rooted adb console:
grep NOW Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
Same- I stick with them out of spite, since I refuse to use a device that doesn't allow replacing the OS or installing your own software ("sideloading") But they're pretty clearly worse as phones and I'll go to my grave mad about the headphone jack.
I'm still mad that I have to keep track of a tiny 3.5mm to USB-C dongle.
Hear hear
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
This was, I believe, the problem that Microsoft wanted to resolve with their gradual burndown of WSUS - a lot of shops (including one I used to work at) would selectively roll out updates based on whether they thought they were relevant, resulting in an explosion of configurations that Microsoft had absolutely never tested against, and naturally, a lot of breakage.
This doesn't really jive with reality as Windows is plenty buggy in the presence or absence of the latest updates. Microsoft has slowly eliminated end user controls over updates because it would interfere with their ability to monetize their customer base. You can't really push a telemetry update, if updates aren't being applied.
I didn't say it accomplished it, I said I thought it was their rationale.
Of course, they also fired a lot of their testers, and seem to have thought that testing was something end users do in prod, so...
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
No current phone from any manufacturer that's reasonably desirable is as small as the 4a, and few of any size have a headphone jack.
I looked into this because I find I want something I can stuff into a trouser pocket. The only reasonably viable android option was a Sony Xperia XZ2 compact, from 2018 on android 10. You can put lineage on it which is currently maintained, but that has the downsides of not passing device integrity which some apps will check, or being willing to constantly play cat and mouse to spoof it. Sony also apparently wipe a p…
> Sony also apparently wipe a partition with a little DRM blob for the camera, which degrades some aspect of its post processing capabilities so image quality might be less.
I think they no longer do that since a while (a few years) ago, but don't ask me which phone model exactly was the last one affected.
Re: Google Pixel 4a's old firmware is gone, trapping users on buggy battery update
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless your Pixel 4a is from Verizon (locked), keep it. Unlock the bootloader, then install LineageOS, MindTheGapps, and Magisk. Once you have Magisk stabilized, install the Advanced Charging Controller, and configure it to halt charging at 80%. That should solve your problems, and turn the updates back on. I don't think there is a way to make Google Pay work in this configuration, which is a drawback. I can put all…
Problem with pretty much every modern battery-powered device is that battery is flogged to near death at every charge. From @marcan's mastodon post, Pixel 4a's battery is charged to 4.45V: qcom,max-voltage-uv = ; This is completely insane, and it's a small miracle that this phone didn't follow Note7's fate. As for charge limiting... limit at 80% is an okay workaround (certainly better than no limit at all!), but it's…
Thank you for sharing your expertise.
It seems to be unbelievable that none of this has become part of AOSP.
I should have a battery setting that optimizes either for battery longevity, or for maximum power delivery. These settings should incorporate best practice, such as you have outlined.
The last stable ACC release was in late 2023, and it appears to remain the best battery management tool for longevity.
Why is this so?
I rewrote your script slightly, and ran it on my Pixel 3.
find /sys/devices/platform |
grep battery/uevent$ |
head -1 |
xargs grep NOW
POWER_SUPPLY_VOLTAGE_NOW=3955800
POWER_SUPPLY_CURRENT_NOW=-222656
find /sys/devices/platform -name uevent |
grep battery |
head -1 |
xargs grep NOW
find /sys/devices/platform \
-path '*/battery/*' \
-name uevent |
head -1 |
xargs grep NOW