No, it's not actually draining the battery faster. It's setting low level limits on maximum and minimum charge levels. (and also the charge rate, further controlling heat issues)
Some folks have hooked up devices between the phone and charge cable that do the coulomb counting (or similar), and (the one case I saw) showed that the phone is only taking in about 40% of the watt-hours that it was doing before the OTA update.
From what I've seen, no one can point to any actual incidents with these phones being dangerously hot. But the google FAQ did have a "Yes you can still take the pixel 4a on flights", reminiscent of the samsung phone issue several years ago...
Some folks have hooked up devices between the phone and charge cable that do the coulomb counting (or similar), and (the one case I saw) showed that the phone is only taking in about 40% of the watt-hours that it was doing before the OTA update.
From what I've seen, no one can point to any actual incidents with these phones being dangerously hot. But the google FAQ did have a "Yes you can still take the pixel 4a on flights", reminiscent of the samsung phone issue several years ago...