It looks like the Google Pixel 3 is going to be the cause of yet another class action lawsuit against Google.
The law firm Chimicles Schwartz Kriner & Donaldson-Smith LLP (CSK&D) has announced that it has started to look into a class action lawsuit against Google for the defects of the Pixel 3 smartphone – released in 2018.
What Pixel 3 defects are being investigated?
According to CSK&D, the law firm is looking at a few defects on the Pixel 3. One of those is the battery drain issues. As well as poor photo and video quality, and app crashes. The law firm is looking to see whether these defects are hardware related. And if so, that would warrant a lawsuit against Google.
Google, as expected, has not responded to the investigation just yet. But if you own a Google Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL, and are experiencing hardware issues, you can file a form on CSK&D’s website, which will contact the attorneys handling this investigation. Note, that this does not include the Pixel 3a series, only the regular Pixel 3 series.
This isn’t the first time Google smartphones have triggered a class action lawsuit
Dating back to the Nexus 6P, where the device suffered from early shutdown and bootloops.
The original Pixel also had a class action lawsuit brought against it, for microphone failures. This was even after the defected devices were RMA’d. Which cost the company $7.25 million. Those cases gave users of the faulty devices up to $500. CSK&D was the law firm that worked on that case as well.
That’s not a good track record for Google. While smartphones do get involved in class action lawsuits somewhat often, for Google, that’s three phones in six cycles. Which is a pretty high percentage for class action lawsuits. However, hopefully the issues that the Pixel 3 had, will be fixed in the future. Particularly the battery life. Though this lawsuit is about the battery life drain and not battery life in general – which has been an issue with Pixel devices all along.
Usually with these class action lawsuits, it takes a few years before they are eventually settled. For example, the class action lawsuit against Huawei and Google for the Nexus 6P started in 2017. It wasn’t until a few days ago (June 2020) that the payments for the lawsuit actually started going out. So if you do have an issue with the Pixel 3, don’t expect to get paid from this class action lawsuit anytime soon.