Three months ago my wife and I both changed our local smartphone plans and changed to a Google Pixel 3a.
Within a week she had a problem where her phone would suddenly shut down when the battery still had 50-60% charge left, while doing nothing. This even happened after the phone had been factory reset, with no third party apps installed. It took a few weeks before Softbank Mobile replaced the phone under warranty.
Now it’s my turn it seems. Recently I would find the phone with less than 50% of battery left in the morning when I had left it hooked up to the charger (so it should have been at 100%). I would reconnect the phone but it would not show the charging symbol. I then tried different cables and chargers and also rebooted the phone. Eventually it would charge again.
Today it showed the following error:
Analogue audio accessory detected. The attached device is not compatible with this phone
Nothing was plugged into its headphone socket or into the USB C port. There was no analog audio device connected. I googled the problem and most results suggested it was a problem with the USB C port. That makes sense, since it would explain both the charging issues and the audio warning, as one can plug an analog device into the USB C port via an adapter.
Other results suggested a factory reset may get it working again, but that did not work for me. After the factory reset I could charge the phone with the charger from my earlier Nexus 6P and a USB C cable when powered off. However, after I powered it up and started the system restore, it no longer charged from either that charger or from the Pixel 3a charger or a Pixel 3 charger. The problem was back.
Time to take it back to the Softbank Mobile shop, I guess 🙁
Needless to say, I am not impressed with a 2/2 failure rate for our Pixel 3a phones so far. The Pixel 3a was great while it worked. The picture quality seems as good as for its more powerful sibling, the more expensive Pixel 3 and battery life was decent too. But that is all meaningless if it randomly shuts down or you can no longer charge it.
UPDATE: Softbank Mobile sent the two months old Pixel 3a in for testing and repair. A couple of days later they quoted almost 20,000 yen (US$190) for the repair of the unspecified damage, which they said would not be covered under warranty 🙁
Google is absolutely irresponsible for putting these phones out. I now get an analog alert every 10 seconds My phone will not stop dinging. I use my phone for business so I can’t just turn the audio and vibration off or I miss important calls and text. Have a list of every crash and glitch this phone had over the last month which was 67 pages long. It deleted the notepad I had this in randomly to free up space. This is criminal. No way to talk to anybody at Google about these issues. I guess I have to wait for the settlement on this version.
I don’t even have a Google mobile device, & it’s happening to mine as well 🤦🏼♀️
My Motorola is doing it since android 12 update, wth.