Google Pixel – Worst Mobile Phone in the History

I don’t outright buy mobile phones. They come with the line I buy from the provider. This Pixel 6 Pro is exactly that. I have a Google One membership and use Google services all the time. Getting a Google phone would be a good move rather than Samsung, which I have always used.

Boy, was I wrong!

They should’ve put a BETA sticker on this phone, as they did with Gmail when it was first released to the public. The number of bugs was driving me crazy. 

When buying an electronic device like a guitar amp, guitar pedal, kitchen mixer, toaster, doorbell, garage door opener etc., I look at reviews and try to understand the fixability of these devices or at least return to the origin to get a replacement.

I DID NOT DO THIS when I got a phone from Google as I trusted their products and the company behind them. The errors weren’t published anywhere as it was a new device.

Here are my problems.

Camera resetting was the biggest problem. The phone restarts when I want to capture kids’ funny moments and turn on the camera. Camera, god damn it; the most used feature; a case where it should have been tested the most. Those are the moments when I wanted to smash this phone, but I am writing this blog post instead.

Attaching photos to a message becomes more complex with only Google Photos on board. You can’t access the images directly on the phone, and Google Photos seldom chooses to show them to you in libraries. Photos not backed up to Google, like the ones coming to your phone via messaging applications, are even harder to reach if you want to forward them again.

If you think of managing Google Assistant compatible power points and lights, this can work for some time. When your phone connects to a 5 GHz WiFi, you lose all the devices as they are no longer on the same network. Most home IoT devices use 2.4 GHz WiFi. I can’t tell the phone to connect to 2.4 GHz WiFi at home.

I dropped my phone one day trying to shoot a photo of the kids, and the screen cracked. I used it until it became unusable, and decided to replace the screen. It was too expensive, and it comes with its problems.

The tech replacing the screen used an OEM screen. They couldn’t get the fingerprint sensor working, although they replaced the one coming with the screen with my old one. The reason was that Google’s database wasn’t recognising this new fingerprint sensor. Why does this sensor need to be registered with Google? And why did my old sensor stop working? Factory resetting the phone didn’t help either. 

Along the process, the proximity sensor stopped working too. When I put the phone to my ear to talk, the screen should go blank so that I don’t press any buttons with my ear. Instead, it stays on. It is a common problem, and there is yet to be a solution other than replacing the phone.

You only find one authorised repairer when you search for a Google-approved repairer in Australia. There is only one official repairer for 25 million people who are supposedly good at following new tech. And I want to know whether they can solve the problem of replacing the screen.

Screen replacement problems are global, stemming from Google’s shitty practices and not establishing the service network properly.

The Android kernel went into panic mode because the screen was replaced, and the phone didn’t recognise it. Panic mode drains the battery as the system thinks the phone is compromised. 

When I read on the forums, all the tech people are warning you not to buy this phone unless you are in a “supported” country to get it serviced. Many people go on holidays to an “unsupported” country where they need to fix their phones as they need multi-factor authentication, credit cards or vital information. These tourists are now locked out of the vital information they need, and good luck getting the phone appropriately fixed.

Update: I went back to the repairer. They did something, and the phone is back to almost normal. The repairer said that maybe Google updated their database of OEM parts so that the screen and the fingerprint reader started working. I still have problems with the camera, as explained above. The phone started losing the network, so I needed to restart it to get back to normal.

I used to install open-source Android firmware on my old phones or try to fix these problems using available diagnosis software, but I don’t want to spend my precious time, especially for a high-priced phone that is supposed to work.

I will go back to Samsung, or I might even try Apple. I am game at this point. I’ve been told that the Nokia X30 is also an excellent clean option.