How Google nerfed my Pixel 4a—then stuck it to me, too
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This is bad advice for anyone in the UK, because most UK networks still charge ludicrous amounts for MMS picture messages (e.g. 40p on Three, 93p on EE). Sure, there are plans with inclusive MMS picture messaging (but most standard plans you’d just pick off the website don’t), but fuck me. 93p to send an image crushed to 300kb.
Perhaps the situation in the US is different.
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Payment system? Google is directly linked into SWIFT. They have their own SWIFT code and payment gateway on premises (not unusual, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon do too I think). Just what you need when you're sending money to developers/YouTubers/whatever the world over.
But that would mean you have to provide Google your banking details.
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600k; it was increased with MMS 1.2 I think. And yes, its pretty normal in lots of countries to bundle SMS/MMS into an "unlimited" plan - the carriers resell access to the gateways to businesses to make their money.
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I have a plan with unlimited text and voice, and 25GB data. I get charged for MMS.
Most people don’t have “unlimited” plans; they have plans with a metered amount of data, “unlimited” texts and voice (because people don’t use those so much any more, so offering them for effectively free is more-or-less cost-neutral for carriers), and then the upsell begins - roaming, this or that media service, gaming things, all for very reasonable monthly prices.
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I was glad to read your article as I have had similar problems with 4a and thought it just might be me. They destroyed the battery life on my phone with an update in January, making it unusable. (I was carrying around multiple battery chargers and keeping it turned off most the time). Since then, Google customer service has been absolutely awful. They take loads of details saying they will get their "higher" team to sort it out, but I never hear back from them. When I get back in touch, they take other details (loads) and again promise they will get back in touch with me, but they never do. I have spent hours in chats and on the phone on hold. I asked for a UK address to which I could address a complaint in writing and they refused to provide one. Right back at the start I stupidly replaced my 4a with a new Pixel phone (which to make matters worse is full of glitches and problems, like the Bluetooth connection not working properly, which the customer service team were also unhelpful about). Never again! I appreciate things can sometimes go wrong and in my opinion the sign of a good company is how they respond when things go wrong. How Google has responded to a problem of their own making has been truly terrible.
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The only available Mac laptops were the Macintosh Portable and the Powerbooks until mid 1999, when the rainbow toilet seat iBooks were released. So, no, they likely weren't using iBooks in the 90s.
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The unlimited I was referring to was messaging where they bundle the SMS/MMS - you're one of the unlucky ones where the carriers still haven't learnt from how they killed video calling by trying to charge for everything (video calling on mobile was a 3G feature - but they charged so much for it, nobody ever used it; MMS was introduced the same way of course, but it wasn't completely catastrophic so it got adopted)
RCS can be bundled into messaging or come out of Internet data - they can send RCS over its own APN (like MMS is usually done seeing it's over HTTP), or over the Internet (seeing RCS is over HTTPS)
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Which wouldn't be a problem except the American banking system doesn't use separate account designators for push and pull requests. The number you give someone to wire you money is the same one your mortgage company uses to pull your monthly payment from your account, for instance. If it was just a bank routing number and a deposit-only number, then WTF would I care who has access to it. I'll happily accept money from anyone who wants to send money to a deposit-only account designator. It's one of the key ways that Zelle is an advancement, in that the account designator you provide never lets someone pull money.
EDIT: Zelle is even a step better than what I described because you don't even have to tell someone what bank the money is going to. All you have to say is something like "my email address is my Zelle address", and they can send you money (as long as they have access to Zelle, of course).
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I had the opportunity to get the same cheap battery replacement to my iPhone 5S back in the days as well when Apple secretly tanked the battery life.
I went to the Apple repairs shop and they denied to do it because the screen was broken and they “could not guarantee that their tools would not totally break the phone.”
This was the dent:
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After doing the same I've been building a resource over the tools/alternatives I've found. Still very much in the early stages but it can be found at https://boundlessgarden.tulloch.contact/
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Corporate bureaucracy when dealing with compensation is not different than UKs “Hostile Environment” approach to immigration.
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Phone was out of warranty right? You don't have corner shops that will repair/swap the battery of your phone faster, cheaper and better than the manufacturer can over there?
As for the payoneer thing, they probably outsourced those refunds to the sweat shop that bid the least for the service. So they're trying to make money from the payoneer referral commission.
As for the payoneer thing, they probably outsourced those refunds to the sweat shop that bid the least for the service. So they're trying to make money from the payoneer referral commission.
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SubWoofer2
Ars Scholae Palatinae
It's pretty hard to not come away from this article with a dislike for Google and a desire to avoid their products.
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I switched to Samsung. Galaxy s24 is relatively small, well made, and you can find a slightly used one for about $400.
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I am from the UK and I cannot fathom why paying for things is so difficult in the US. I can pay cash (Very Easy although some places are starting to go cashless), or by card (Bank card NOT credit card, hav not used a credt card in many years). I can pay by card "touchless" for smaller transactions. Why do i need any other payment types?
My MOTO for credit cards is if you NEED it then you cannot afford it.
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You can potentially also self-host, if you can get a VM from some other provider that isn't Microsoft/Amazon/Google, or you could even try hosting on your own computer at home (but realizing you take your risks of downtime and such if you really manage your own physical server and internet connection).
Nextcloud is a pretty amazing substitute for much of the stuff people use cloud providers for (syncing files between devices, calendar, online docs, file sharing), and you can run that on a VM.
For backups, there's also things like Backblaze, iDrive (NOT affiliated with Apple), and others.
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they borked me too, The 4a was a great little phone, but their 50$ when you send us your financial nudes offer is upsetting.
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Erm, i have a 1st gen ipad Pro that is bent. Pretty common issue. Device still works fine though, so it doesn't bother me. Before that, I had an iPhone 7 whose power button failed. Apple replaced it under warranty. They all have issues.
The difference is, Apple has invested a lot in customer service, and Google is still just beginning to. There's an Apple store within 5 miles of me which offers reasonably quick service. For Google, I'll have to post my phone and wait weeks for repair.
I still prefer Android, and since my Pixel is much cheaper, I just make the gamble that if it breaks, I'll get a replacement and then sell off whatever remedy I manage to get out of Google to offset the cost.
In my experience, Google is trending in the positive direction. They were surprisingly helpful to me when my Fitbit broke around the 2 year mark.
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That's one way to look at a credit card. I see it as a transaction facilitator (online purchases) and a free way to offset my floating mortgage amount by the average monthly balance.
The caveat is that if you can't guarantee to pay the balance off at the end of the month, then you are spending money you can't afford.
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That was option 3. In effect, they offered to do this and the author chose financial compensation as an alternative.
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It continually amazes me that despite countless horror stories about Pixels in nearly every generation, people keep buying them and expecting something different. Google is simply horrible at making phones.
And I say this as someone who was a die hard Nexus and Pixel buyer at one time. After my family got 3 DIFFERENT models of pixel 3, all of which were garbage in totally different ways, and none of which lasted 2 years, I switched to Apple and swore to never give Google another dime ever again.
And I say this as someone who was a die hard Nexus and Pixel buyer at one time. After my family got 3 DIFFERENT models of pixel 3, all of which were garbage in totally different ways, and none of which lasted 2 years, I switched to Apple and swore to never give Google another dime ever again.
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Interesting take. If you were as interested in keeping your information secure as you portray here would you really be using a phone that is almost 6 years old and has not received a security update since Feb 2023?
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I'm sure the real goal is to make all of the possible solutions so painful that many will just do nothing thereby saving Google a fortune.
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My last Android phone was a Pixel 2. It was supposedly the best Android phone at the moment. Within a month, Google introduced a bug that cratered performance, and 3 months later they broke Android Auto...which was the whole reason I went to Android. All of the fixes for the issue were for USB-C cables that didn't exist anymore, and Google's answer was to stop answering requests for help. I haven't been happy with an iPhone ever since, but at least they generally work.
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I don't know, sounds kind of fraudulent. Here's this discount you can't use or $50 with this shady company or an inconvenient battery replacement.
Sometimes it seems like Google makes more money from Apple devices than Android, and acts accordingly.
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You can be sure that low end jobs will require this before long. We're rebuilding the class system here, first class, second and steerage. Or a caste system.
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Because, regardless of how many horror stories you've read/heard, not everyone has the same experience.
My wife had a Pixel XL, I had a Pixel 6 and now a Pixel 9, no issues on any of the devices at all. None, other than (perhaps coincidentally) my wife's ancient Pixel XL stopped working shortly after she passed away in 2021.
I've had Samsung, Motorola and Google devices, all worked fine but Samsung locked everything down between the S5 and S7 era and I could no longer root my phones to remove all the junk my carrier was pre-loading on the phones, and that made me switch to Pixel.
Pixel is the closest thing I can get to stock Android out of the box, and for me it works as expected (I honestly could do without Gemini/AI, but it's not a deal breaker... so far).
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I thought the same thing. I was there on another matter when a Pixel came in for repair. The counter person informed the customer that the repair was part of some google program.
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I am an iOS user. But, I see many good devices on Android and think the differences are user specific. While I marvel at the Pixel line, I would never conside4r one because of the tendency for google products to just disappear in unexplainable ways
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Yep. I haven't used Amazon since 2022, mostly for their poor treatment of employees, but also for their monopolistic practices. Finally convinced my wife to dump the Amazon app as well.
Kohl's turned their store credit card into a regular credit card from one of the major banks. Bye bye Kohl's credit card.
I used to be a Ford fan, but after my 2002 Windstar developed and issue with the intake manifold that my mechanic says happens every 30k miles, I'll pass on Fords.
It's part of corporate culture these days, the immediate profit is more important than customer loyalty and brand reputation. Sure that keeps the stock price and/or dividends up in the short term, but long term they're going to suffer.
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Sshhhhh.... He has painstakingly crafted a worldview around his beliefs, and you risk disturbing his narrative.
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You know why we don’t forget these? Because Google apologists trot them out every time they tell people not to expect parity from equivalently-priced devices, hoping that you won’t know each of those was grossly exaggerated. It’s like watching American conservatives tell people that healthcare in Europe is terrible.
The antenna issue was measurable only if you used the phone without a case and watched a signal-strength meter while squeezing the phone uncomfortably hard. It had no impact on normal users.
“Batterygate” is a way to make it sound scary to have the phone keep running rather than spontaneously turn off when the battery was degraded after years of use. There’s a reason why every phone on the market does this.
“Bendgate” was a very successful attempt to get ad clicks but again, it affected very few users and the lawyer trying to organize a class action suit gave up after failing to establish the existence of enough people to constitute a class.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to criticize Apple - MacBook keyboards, for example - but there’s been a clear quality gap in the phone arena where Google was all to happy to charge as much for an inferior product. Blame the MBAs who took over the company in the DoubleClick acquisition, but don’t let your product loyalties keep you making economically irrational decisions. This always reminds me of the people I knew as a kid who had declared themselves to be Chevy or Ford guys and kept paying more for vehicles which broke down a lot more than Japanese brands. Big companies have to see declining sales before they change.
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If only Google had a payment system to send you the $50. They could even brand it "Google Pay" - and it would be easy to use. Money would arrive in your Wallet.
I received money from a Class Action lawsuit last year. They put the money in my Paypal. I did nothing other than provide my email address. Months (and months) later I get an email from Paypal "$35 deposited to your account" Done.
Sounds like Google needs DOGE to show up and help them out.
I received money from a Class Action lawsuit last year. They put the money in my Paypal. I did nothing other than provide my email address. Months (and months) later I get an email from Paypal "$35 deposited to your account" Done.
Sounds like Google needs DOGE to show up and help them out.
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I host a lot of stuff locally on my Synology NAS. The reason I'm recommending to start with Proton (or whatever "trustable" email provider of your choice) is that the one thing that I really wouldn't recommend self-hosting, either locally or in the cloud, is your email server. Unless you really know what you're doing (and I don't, and most people don't), that's inviting a lot of trouble. So starting with finding your email provider, then seeing what else is on offer, is a good first step.
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After 2 nexus tablets, 1 nexus phone and 2 pixel phones ALL having battery issues, I finally learned my lesson.
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