Google says the Pixel idle battery drain bug is fixed, but users aren't convinced

Pixel owners have spent months chasing the cause of an annoying idle battery drain bug that seemed to chew through the battery even when their phones are doing absolutely nothing. Now, Google says it’s fixed the issue for some Pixel 10 and Pixel 9 devices, but the story may not be over just yet.

The company has marked the long-running bug as “Fixed” in its public Issue Tracker, telling affected users that a patch was included in the July update (build CP2A.260705.006) for the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro XL, and Pixel 10a. Meanwhile, Pixel 8a and Pixel 9a owners will have to wait until the September Quarterly Platform Release (QPR).

The bug appears to have first surfaced shortly after the March 2026 Pixel Drop, with a Pixel 9 Pro XL owner reporting severe battery drain while the phone sat idle. According to the report, the device’s GNSS subsystem repeatedly failed to enter its low-power state, triggering continuous hardware interrupts that prevented the Tensor processor from reaching Deep Doze. Even with Airplane Mode enabled and all wireless radios turned off, the phone reportedly continued losing battery much faster than expected.

Although the original report came from a Pixel 9 Pro XL owner, dozens of follow-up comments suggested the problem extended well beyond a single device. Users reported similar idle drain across multiple Pixel 7, Pixel 8, and Pixel 9 models, while some users even reported the same behavior on Samsung Galaxy phones, suggesting a potentially broader Android- or chipset-related issue.

Google’s latest Issue Tracker update suggests the underlying bug has now been addressed for the most recent flagship Pixels. However, the July Pixel update changelog doesn’t mention any fix related to idle battery drain, making it difficult to confirm exactly what changed. That omission, combined with fresh reports from users after the issue was marked fixed, raises questions about whether the rollout has fully resolved the problem.

While closing a support ticket might clean up Google’s internal issue tracker, it doesn’t automatically stop a rogue background drain in the real world. Until Google acknowledges the problem with a dedicated, verifiable update, users have every right to stay vocal.