Battery life has easily become the biggest frustration with my Pixel, so I’m constantly experimenting to squeeze a little more life out of it. Over the past few months, I’ve tried just about everything, from turning off Location Accuracy feature to tweaking every battery-related setting I could find.
Some changes helped; others barely made a difference. But that’s become part of my routine whenever my Pixel starts draining faster than I’d like. This time, I decided to try something completely different: I forced my phone to stay on 4G for a full week. I honestly wasn’t expecting much, but the difference ended up being far bigger than I imagined.
I picked the slower lane on purpose
Living on 4G wasn’t the downgrade I expected
The biggest change is that my Pixel no longer keeps jumping between a 5G signal and a 4G connection. Instead of hunting for the “best” network in the background, it stays on 4G, which is far more stable where I live. Fewer random slowdowns from switching towers, fewer moments where videos buffer even though I supposedly have 5G. In areas where 5G coverage is patchy or congested, 4G turned out to be the more reliable option. The modem also isn’t working overtime trying to cling to a distant 5G signal, which is where the battery saving comes from. A modem holding on to a marginal 5G signal draws much more power than one cleanly locked onto LTE, and that gap adds up over a full day.
The numbers backed it up. On 5G, I was averaging around 3.8 hours of screen-on time and losing roughly 13–16% overnight just sitting idle. On LTE, that moved to 7 hours of screen-on time and about 2–3% overnight (mainly due to notifications), on the same charger and with roughly the same usage.
Goodbye, 5G (for now)
Here’s how I made the switch
So, if you’re wondering how to force your Pixel to stay on 4G, the good news is that it only takes a few taps. You don’t need to dig through hidden developer settings. Just follow these steps:
- Open the Settings app on your Pixel.
- Tap Network & Internet.
- Select SIMs.
- Tap your primary SIM.
- Scroll until you find Preferred network type.
- Change it from 5G (recommended) to LTE.
And that’s it. From that point on, your Pixel will stick to 4G instead of constantly trying to connect to 5G. If you ever want faster download speeds again, you can return to the same menu and switch back to 5G in just a few seconds.
One thing worth knowing is that this setting is per SIM. I left my second SIM on 5G the whole time, so I always had the option of routing a heavy download through it without touching the main line. If you use a single SIM, it’s still a two-tap job to flip back.
The slower speeds only really showed up in two places — large games and app downloads stretched out long enough that I’d start them and walk away instead of waiting. Hotspot was the bigger annoyance when I was working from cafés, because tethering my laptop over LTE felt fine for email and browsing, but noticeably slower the moment I pulled down anything heavy. If you often tether or download a lot on the go, this is the trade-off you’ll actually notice. Other than that, calls, messages, navigation, and streaming were unaffected.
I stopped babysitting my battery
And started using my Pixel normally again
The only trade-off is that you’ll notice slower download speeds in places where fast 5G coverage is actually available, but for my day-to-day use and since I work from home most of the time, that was a compromise I barely noticed.
The biggest improvement, though, was the battery. Before making the switch, my Pixel would lose charge much faster than I’d expect, even when it was just sitting idle. The battery percentage would also drop surprisingly quickly whenever I watched YouTube, recorded high-resolution videos, took photos, or played games for a while. I found myself checking the battery icon far more often than I wanted, wondering how much power I’d have left by the end of the day. Since forcing 4G, that anxiety has eased considerably. My phone still drains the battery when I’m pushing it; that’s inevitable, but it no longer feels like it’s burning through power for no good reason. For me, that alone has made this tiny setting change well worth trying.
Worth trying before you blame the battery
A week on 4G was enough to convince me that some of what I was calling battery drain was really just my Pixel struggling to hold on to a 5G signal that wasn’t particularly strong in the first place. The best part is that this fix costs nothing, takes less than a minute to try, and is just as easy to reverse if it doesn’t work for you.
Before you start turning off features you genuinely enjoy or assume your battery has gotten worse with age, I’d recommend giving this a shot for a few days. If you live in an area with excellent 5G coverage, you may find yourself switching back, and that’s perfectly fine. But if your phone spends most of its day bouncing between weak 5G and stable 4G, this change might make a much bigger difference than you expect.