May 2026 Pixel update is here, but the notorious battery drain and bootloop bugs remain

Google just rolled out the May 2026 software update for its Pixel lineup. It patches a few display glitches and a wireless charging bug, but leaves two critical problems ruining the experience for thousands of owners completely untouched.

Users have been fighting severe idle battery drain and a fatal bootloop defect since March. Google elevated both items internally weeks ago. Neither issue got a fix today.

Battery drain still plagues the lineup

The official release notes for the May OTA only list four minor fixes. The glaring omission is the idle battery drain tanking screen-on time across multiple Pixel generations.

In the main Google Issue Tracker thread, the issue is tied to a system bug where the GNSS module refuses to sleep. This keeps the processor awake and drains the battery even when the phone sits idle in airplane mode. The same thread already had hundreds of comments, but we’re seeing a fresh wave of reports coming in again following the May release.

Meanwhile, folks have also taken to Reddit to highlight the same problem. One user over on r/GooglePixel asked where the battery fix was. Another commenter sarcastically told others to have fun waiting another month and to remember their power bricks.

The scale of the problem is substantial. According to a recent Android Authority survey, roughly 76 percent of over 2,600 respondents reported their Pixel battery draining much faster after the March update.

A user in r/pixel_phones posted a thread titled “Another update without any actual fixes huh.” They noted having to charge their phone up to five times a day.

The fatal bootloop remains unaddressed

Even worse is the fatal bootloop bug turning expensive hardware into paperweights. Google marked this as a P0 priority weeks ago. That classification usually means all hands on deck, but it looks like the May update quietly skipped it anyway.

As we reported earlier, affected phones accept the user PIN and then immediately go black or cycle into Android Recovery mode.

Google Support has reportedly been pushing users toward factory resets or refurbished device replacements. A commenter mentioned that a factory reset destroys local data trapped inside the encrypted partition, making it an impractical route for anyone without a recent cloud backup.

Manual workarounds are also getting risky. The Google Developers factory image page warned that the May 2026 update increments the bootloader anti-rollback version for newer devices like the Pixel 10. Flashing the wrong slot manually can result in an unbootable state.

For now, affected Pixel owners are stuck waiting in the dark for an out-of-band patch or next month’s drop.

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