‘Pixel 7 Pro has screen problem with high battery consumption’

October 15, 2022 Luisa Rey

The first Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro models are now in the possession of different people, including reviewers. It seems that the Pixel 7 Pro suffers from a battery problem on sunny days. What is going on?

Does the screen drain battery?

On DroidApp we published an extensive Pixel 7 Pro preview on Thursday. In this we go through various aspects of the new high-end smartphone from Google. Enough has been reported about the device from Google in recent times, and now there is also news to report about the Pixel 7 Pro. It’s about the phone’s screen, which in some situations seems to demand unnecessarily much from the battery.

XDA colleagues report this issue with the Pixel 7 Pro. According to them, the battery life of the Pixel 7 Pro has clearly improved compared to its predecessor, the Pixel 6 Pro. However, not in all cases. This would be the case if you step out with the Pixel. On a sunny day, the brightness is increased to such an extent that the lifespan is drastically shortened. In fifteen minutes, 10 percent of the battery charge would have been taken away. XDA talks about disproportionately high power consumption by the display outdoors, and this story is corroborated by several other testers using the Pixel 7 Pro across different regions of the world.

According to the colleagues, the power consumption of the screen at maximum brightness is 6W with the Pixel 7 Pro. It is suspected that the Tensor G2 chipset has a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 10-12W. With the Galaxy S22+, the consumption of the screen in high brightness is 4W. In practice, this means that the battery of the Pixel 7 Pro is over in about three hours. And then it’s just about the screen. There are even more components in use, so the suspicion is that the device should be sent to the charger earlier in these cases.

It is unclear what the cause is and whether it is a hardware or software error in the device. The problem seems to only affect the Pixel 7 Pro, according to XDA, and not occur with the Pixel 7. If it is a software bug, it is relatively easy to address with a software update. If it is a hardware failure then other steps will have to be taken. Google itself has not responded to the report. We have not yet been able to determine the problem at the editors, which is due to the rainy Dutch weather.

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