>My least charitable view (and immediate reaction) is that they're purposely ruining a viable budget phone to make more sales.
My wife was using a pixel 4 until last year and upgraded to a 7, I took her old phone and switched it over to my info and used it for like 2 days before it got a random update and refused to ever work again. Her 7 just got an update a couple of days ago and the battery went dead and it refused to boot until it'd been plugged in for an hour and then would only boot into recovery mode before finally returning to normal. I think google just has something really screwed up with their update process.
Google pixel software is horrendous, shocking honestly for a company with Google capabilities. Bought pixel 6 at launch, could not take calls after an update (the speaker would just emit a high pitch tone 15s after connecting, I had to ask people to call me using messaging apps for a while, lucky I did not rely on my phone for work) and wifi would switch off by itself randomly and needed to restart phone to get it working again. Had to update to beta build to get these fixed. For my model and others, it seems like every update or 2 there are populations that hit the forums with battery drain issues. I will never buy a pixel ever again.
My wife was using a pixel 4 until last year and upgraded to a 7, I took her old phone and switched it over to my info and used it for like 2 days before it got a random update and refused to ever work again. Her 7 just got an update a couple of days ago and the battery went dead and it refused to boot until it'd been plugged in for an hour and then would only boot into recovery mode before finally returning to normal. I think google just has something really screwed up with their update process.