Still using Pixel 2. Have been meaning to use it with Daydream VR and www.riftcat.com to see how well it works with PC VR games.
I sent an email to Google Store last night asking them what was up with my delivery. This morning, it seemed to have done the trick, the FedEx tracking number works now! It says my package shipped and should be here by Monday.
So the task switcher was one of my minor beefs with the Pixel 3 and Android 9. No longer!
Turns out you just swipe right on the button bar anywhere, not just on the home button or the now-empty right side. A quick swipe right goes to previous app (which I use constantly and missed badly) or swipe and hold to quickly scroll through the task switcher. Works great, love it.
I like it too, especially being able to quickly swipe to the end and end all tasks quickly.
My Pixel 3 finally arrived yesterday.
And I can confirm today that this little accessory works great. I know @Scott123 said it didn’t work with his Pixel2, but I can confirm it works with the Pixel 3. I got the phone charged on the way to work while playing music through the auxiliary port in the car.
Mine also arrived yesterday, I hope to have time THURSDAY to actually unbox it.
The two accessories I bought from your post, the tempered glass and the case were a mixed bag.
The tempered glass went on fine. But when I put the case on, the tempered glass separates in the top right corner for some reason. Maybe I should take off the case and just let the tempered glass settle in for longer? I tried having no case for the first few hours to give it more time, but it didn’t seem to help too much.
Plus heads up on the case, while handling it, my hands became black in a bunch of spots, like ink came off it or something.
Wonderful… I’ll let you know how my experience goes later this week.
A) cases are for the weak. You know how much SCIENCE went into the glass on this thing? Also it’s plenty big enough. Live a little!
B) I am still daily amazed at how much ass this phone kicks. I’m not even a little sad about spending the money on it. Camera is as advertised and everything else is better.
Another heads up I forgot to mention, it gives you the option to transfer everything from your old phone to your new one via USB-C cable, but doing that was a bad idea.
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It doesn’t transfer a lot of stuff, like Whatsapp images, phone history, sms messages. You still need to do those through Whatsapp and SMS backup app. It transfers your secure apps like banking apps, but none of the credentials, so you might as well not copy them over, you still have to do the hard part like setup all those apps using your passwords, and setup fingerprint scanning again, etc. So my advice, don’t transfer a lot of the stuff it offers to transfer. It’s useless, it doesn’t make your life any easier.
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Transfer takes foreeeeeeeeeever. It estimated 5 minutes, and then 2 hours later, it estimated 3 minutes left. Luckily those last 3 minutes were only 1 hour long.
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The whole time you’re transferring, the screen on both phones is on, they get really hot, and in my case the Nexus 6p is using the USB cable to charge itself, draining the Pixel 3 of battery power.
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At the end of the process the Pixel 3 was almost out of batteries, and it was VERY HOT. And just like the Nexus 6p, when it’s that hot, it charges really slowly. When I plugged it in, it said it would charge in 6 hours. After an hour it said 5 more hours. So the time scale seemed correct. I disconnected it and just let it sit, not charging or doing anything, and when it cooled down, I charged it, and it charged much faster.
I think overall, my strategy for making the PIxel 3 actually last 3 years is just to try to take care of the battery the best that I can. On my last 3 phones, the battery is the thing that forces you to get a new phone.
I read somewhere that I shouldn’t charge the phone overnight, just get it to 100% or close to it, and then unplug it. And that’s good for battery life in the long run. So hopefully careful things like that over the next 3 years will let this phone actually last that long.
Hopefully the phone won’t get super hot again like it did on Transfer day.
I’ve been setting up all my apps and settings from my OnePlus One and my Nexus 6p. Looking up passwords, etc., trying to just setup everything on one phone. It took a lot of time yesterday and today, but I’m almost there.
Fuck that noise. Too many phones shattered for friends and I from fairly inconsequential drops. I’m almost to the point of getting Otterboxen at this point; the fucking stupid curved screens on modern Samsungs (sorry bro, I’m giving up real headphones and expandable storage over my dead body) mean that most cases barely have a lip anymore, meaning that the screen is still at risk from face-down drops.
You’re really not wrong on this. My technique has been to:
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Setup new phone with Google account, which pulls over (most) installed Apps, Contacts, and obviously G Account stuff like Calendars, Gmail accts, Hangouts, etc.
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Use SMS Backup and Transfer to grab virtually every text/MMS/call I’ve sent or received since I moved into the modern smartphone age ~8 years ago.
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Move over the increasingly enormous SD card containing virtually every picture or movie I’ve shot with my phone, plus an emergency cache of downloaded tunes for when I’m inevitably out of signal area and driving (because T-Mobile sucks fucks). I’m up to a 256GB in here, now. Yeah, sure, the photos/videos are all on Dropbox, too, but hey, if I wanna access them with bad reception, why shouldn’t I be able to?
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Laboriously re-login to everything, starting with LastPass to make the process easier. Setup important app settings again as early as possible (e.g., SwiftKey custom dictionary). Luckily a lot of apps now do their own cloud storage of important settings, so, e.g., all of my custom alarms for each day of the week that live inside Sleep As Droid come over when it re-sets up.
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Keep the old phone handy for a week or two for any random stuff I’ve missed.
It still sucks, so I don’t relish the process, but it’s way less buggy than either Samsung Cloud or direct USB transfer processes I’ve tried on my Samsungs, my gf’s LG, or my mom’s Pixels.
You meant old phone here, and yeah, I’m trying to run through all my usecases during this week before I have to send back the Nexus 6p. I had forgotten, for instance, that there’s certain things I keep track of for work that are only Chrome Tabs that I perpetually use, and chrome history and passwords did not get transferred over. Well some things did, but other things didn’t, for some reason. So I’m trying to run into all those before I have to reset my old phone and send it off.
I used it for a day without the case. Just the tempered glass. I agree, it was glorious. The whole smooth glass feel of the thing is even better than the OnePlus One’s matte granite back.
But yeah, I drop my phone way too often to not put a cover on something that I’m going to be depending on lasting for the next 3 years.
OTOH, to bolster your argument, when I got my Nexus 6p, I threw caution to the wind with my old OnePlus One, and stripped it of a cover and the tempered glass. And ever since then, that thing is so smooth and comfortable to hold, I’ve never dropped it. I’ve been using it for 2 years without a cover now. It’s battery is horrible and it only lasts for an hour or two between charges, but man, it’s comfortable to hold and maybe it was designed that way so that I never would drop it, I don’t know. Maybe the Pixel 3 is the same way.
Thanks for the catch; edited :)
And yeah, an issue I’ve run into is that I had originally intended to use TMO’s JUMP plan to switch devices every single year. The downside is that you must surrender the old device immediately upon getting the new one, which is just too risky that I’ll have missed something vital (like those Chrome tabs, though signing into your Chrome account should alleviate that, though the syncing is super fucky sometimes).
So instead I wind up having payments on two phones at a time each year, but on the flipside, if the new one breaks, I’ve got an only one-year older backup available while the warranty swap goes through. And hey, ~$30/mo ain’t that bad for that level of peace of mind. At the end of the year, I send the oldest surviving phone to family in Guatemala, who like to keep spares in case of the all-too-common armed robberies down there.
what the fuck
They are websites that were designed for the company I work for, so we can monitor certain things. So I open them in Chrome. And just so that I never have to remember website addresses, login names and passwords, I just keep those Chrome tabs always open on my phone. That way I can switch to those tabs and hit reload.
Ye gods. That way lies madness.
Now that the gadget I bought works pretty flawlessly (so I can charge my phone and output to the aux cable/headphones at the same), I’m not as upset over losing the 3.5mm jack. It does suck that I had to pay for it though. Still, that pain was lessened because the phone came with a free pair of headphones. I’ve never had a phone come with headphones before. And they’re an interesting design too. They use the cord going to the earpiece to fold itself, and that fold of the cord makes the earbuds fit into your ear. So they’re not quite in-ear buds, they just kind of rest right outside the ear holes, but sort of rest inside.
I hear you on the storage though. I would also add a replaceable battery to that list. Why did everyone capitulate and stop complaining about that one? Like I mentioned upthread, I’ve had to stop using each of my last 3 android phones because of the stupid battery.
Do you still get an audio delay, e.g., while watching video? I’ve seen some complaints about it with some USB C headphones/adapters, and since that’s the principle thing bugging me about Bluetooth (alongside quality), it’d still be a no-deal for me.
And weird; I don’t think I’ve ever bought a cellphone that DIDN’T come with headphones. Down to the old Sony/Sony Ericsson flipphones I was buying in the early 00s.
Yeah, look, I get that I can buy a cellphone with 128GB of internal storage or whatever now. But I could also buy a phone that has 128GB internal and 256GB external. Moar = bettar, yo.
And yes, the battery thing is fucking awful. The last truly great phone I’ll ever own was the Note 4, which had a huge, flat OLED screen, headphone jack, replaceable battery, and upgradable storage. Sadly, something on the mobo or storage controller on mine went funny and it started bootlooping anytime I hit storage for more than just loading the OS, so I had to retire it.
RIP, last great phone.