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Google Play Services causing severe battery drain for some Pixel 2/XL users after Nov update

One of the main reasons I love Google’s Pixel 2 and specifically the Pixel 2 XL is the battery life. These phones have some serious endurance, but a recent update seems to have messed that up a bit.

Reported by quite a few users on Google’s Pixel support forums as well as Reddit, Google Play Services is currently suspected to be the cause of severe battery drain on Google’s latest flagship, as well as a handful of other phones.

According to affected users, battery drain varies from device to device. One user claims that Play Services took up about 30% of the battery through the day, while other users say that Play Services is the cause of their phone draining 90% of the battery in just a couple of hours.

On a personal note, I’ve definitely noticed below average battery life in the past week or two, but not quite to that extent, and it’s unclear to me if Play Services has been the cause.

The bug does appear to be tied to Wi-Fi and November’s security patch, but one user does claim a potential fix, at least a temporary one. Clearing Play Services data and disabling Wi-Fi temporarily after a reboot seems to lessen the impact, but there are no guarantees on that.

Google will hopefully fix this problem through a coming Play Services update, and a community manager has already acknowledged the problem saying that “we’d like to dig into this more.”


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