Pixel 7 And 6 Owners Blame Google App For Massive Battery Drain And Overheating Issues

A deluge of Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 users are reporting high battery usage and overheating, which seems to be linked to the Google app after the latest May 2023 security update. Even worse, rolling back to older version of the app doesn't seem to fix the problem either.

The Pixel 6 and 7 lineup have been criticized for overheating issues, untimely firmware and security updates, and random bugs from said updates, among other things. Now, a new and growing problem has reared its ugly head, causing phones to overheat and drain their batteries faster than normal, which seem to be caused by a recent security update. 

An increasing number of Pixel 6 and 7 owners have hit the Google Support forums to voice their complaints, describing that after updating to the May 2023, their devices began showing the following similar symptoms:

• Phones would get warm or even hot to the touch while idle and not plugged into a charger.
• Battery life would decline as much as 20% per hour also while idle.

Upon digging into app usage data, a few users spotted the possible culprit being the Google app. Those that have tried backtracking to an older version of Google app or even factory-resetting their device(s) haven't found any success in correcting the problem, which leads us to believe that it may be a server-side fault. At this point however, no one knows exactly what's going on. Mountain View hasn't been very helpful in the support forums either, with customer support offering standard-issue troubleshooting methods that haven't worked.

So far, it seems like the new Pixel 7a isn't on the affected list. Google hasn't officially addressed the problem yet, but we hope that when they do, owners won't have to wait untill the June 2023 update for the fix.