I’m a huge fan of Android phones and specifically google phones. The vanilla android experience is my favorite! Samsung and other manufacturers come up with their own UI experience and I’m not a fan. I can see why they do it, you want to provide an experience for all users and make everyone happy. Maybe I’m just hard to please?
My addiction started with the HTC Dream and continued with the HTC Sensation, Nexus 5, Pixel, and now I have the Pixel 3A XL. I have never been one to drop cash on the latest and greatest phone, so there were several phones that never made it in my pocket. Every phone I’ve had has had manufacturer problems. Including, my Pixel 3a XL, which I’ll get to later.
HTC Dream (2008)
I was super stoked to pick up this phone back in 2008! I used this phone for 4 years and I’m still amazed the keyboard never broke! The dream was to learn how to write Android apps and have my own app in the App store. I’ve helped out on many, but there has never been an app in the app store in my name! Someday? It’s till a dream I carry from year to year.
HTC Sensation (2012)
Another exciting upgrade after 4 years with my first android phone. They got rid of the slide out keyboard, which blew my mind. I had a lot of problems with this phone. The UI looked pretty slick, and I think this is where I feel out of love of the custom UI companies started putting on their phones. The UI was always having problems and the batteries were crap. I have several emails, where I purchased replacement batteries for this device. What a nightmare!?
Nexus 5 (2013) – $399
I decided to purchase this phone from Google directly. The price was a little more expensive (then) I wanted to pay, because I am cheap. This phone was built by LG and had several problems.
This is the first phone I had to ship back to the manufacturer and try and survive without a phone for 7 days! What!? I couldn’t fathom going 2 hours without my phone let alone 166 more hours! The phone was shipped off to LG and I tracked every step of the way, to and from my house! There was some kind of addiction going. I am completely fine with my phone addiction though 🙂
This phone broke another time, while it was out of warranty, and apparently, I loved it so much I purchased another one in 2015 off of eBay. It lasted a whole year, before I ditched it.
Pixel (2016) – $649
Google came out with this awesome phone and I couldn’t resit buying it! Phones were getting super expensive, but I had to pull the trigger! The wife had given me the OK, I think she was tired of hearing me complain about my phone. I purchased the 128 GB model, so there was plenty of space to store all my music and photos for DAYS. The camera was very good and it has the finger print reader, that instantly fell in love with.
Four years had passed since I purchased the Pixel and it was starting to have some problems. It would randomly lock up and no amount of factory resets would seem to fix it.
Pixel 3a XL (2020) – $479
After reading several reviews for the Pixel 4 and fearing another crappy phone, I decided to go with this phone. The price tag was decent and most of the specs were good, except the memory (64gb). It has an awesome camera that I love and the battery life is amazing! (especially, because I don’t play games on my phone) Truth be told, The stereo jack is what finally sold me on it!
The problem
I’ve had this phone for 6 months now and on Friday while having a call with my wife (on speaker phone), the call kept cutting out. I totally blamed her phone, but she could hear me fine and I could hear her through the ear piece. I thought it was pretty strange, but work kept me from playing with the phone. After work, I noticed that the alarms weren’t working (door bell, etc). Further research revealed that there were several other people who had similar problems.
I tried everything the forums said to try with no luck. The next thing to do was contact support and listen to them try and have me repeat them. After chatting with a tech guy for an hour, we decided to do a factory reset on my phone. His words were “I am very confident this will fix the issue”, which, I had 0.00000001% confidence that he was right. Another hour rolls by and my phone finally finishes restoring itself and the problem still existed.
The support guy emailed me back and told me I had two options:
- Mail my phone in and wait 7-10 business days
- Go to a local dealer, uBreakiFix, and get it fixed. (On Google)
I complained how inconvenient both options were, but they don’t care. The closest store was 40 minutes away, and it would take 3-4 hours to fix. COVID-19 made this process worse, since I couldn’t hang out up in Sandy while they fixed it. Driving home and driving back up was the only option. They fixed the phone though and they were SUPER awesome! They had to switch out the loud speaker. Watch this Teardown if you want to see what the innards look like.
Reunited
I have my phone back and completely restored with only a few mishaps (I lost my place on my audio books!! GRR!!!!!!!!), but nothing too serious.
I’m definitely going to keep buying my phones from Google. They will probably keep breaking, and talking to support will drive me absolutely bonkers, but I refuse to switch to Samsung or an iPhone!
Future
I’m looking forward to the Pixel 4 an 4a, but I will not switch to them early. Google seems to have a bad track record for getting it right the first time around.
My dream of writing an app will continue and maybe 2020 is the year I’ll complete one?
(credits: Image by Jonathan Sautter from Pixabay)