Google is extending the warranty for the Pixel 4 XL by an extra year. Before you get too excited, the extension only covers a handful of specific power-related issues, including charging, faster-than-expected drain, random restarts, and being unable to power on the phone. It’s only valid for Pixel 4 XL’s purchased in the US, Singapore, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan. Warranty eligibility for these issues as part of the extension can be verified online or in person at uBreakiFix.
This change is curious — usually, these sorts of targeted warranty extensions result from lawsuit settlements or known issues. We’re typically on the pulse of Pixel-related hardware problems, but we haven’t heard too many reports targeting the sort of issues Google lists as causes for this extension, and we haven’t dug up any lawsuits surrounding the problems. However, Google opts customers into a forced arbitration agreement by default now which may have made a dent in that. (Related: be sure to opt yourself right on out of that if you ever buy a Pixel and value legal recourse.)
Issues covered by the warranty extension, according to the support document, must be associated with:
- “Not able to turn on the phone
- The phone restarts or shuts down randomly without a manual restart or shutdown
- Charging with an adapter
- Wireless charging
- The phone’s battery draining significantly faster than earlier in its use”
Other repairs aren’t covered by the warranty, and may even supersede the extended coverage and require separate repair before any warranty-covered repairs for the listed issues can occur. Pixel 4 XLs bought in the US, Singapore, Canada, Japan, and Taiwan are covered. If your Pixel 4 XL is from Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, or the UK, it isn’t covered by this extension.
The countries might give a clue about the issue, though. North America and Taiwan had a separate SKU from the general global model (as did Japan), and the countries named as covered would seem to exclude the global model. That is, excluding Singapore, and I can’t verify which SKU that market uses. But it could be that whatever potential defect this extension covers is less likely to affect the global version of the phone.
We’ve reached out to Google for more information regarding the extension and the nature of the cause behind it. In the meantime, the full details of the extension are available at Google’s support page here, and Pixel 4 XL owners in the US and elsewhere should take note that they now have an extra year of coverage if their phone can’t turn on or has problems charging.
