I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option.
I tried Android early on, had similarly unacceptable support experiences, and whenever I'm tempted to dip my toes back in the water I'm reminded of how bad things are with cases like this. In the case of the Nexus 6p it's Google's flagship product and it's a worthless paperweight 13 months after purchase.
It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google. I've seen lots of complaints from Nexus 6P owners who didn't being shoved off to Huawei and their terrible support. But I bought mine from Google, who twice offered me RMAs after the warranty period was over with no resistance. Most recently they replaced it with a new Pixel XL, instead (due to stock issues, I assume).
That being said, Google needs to improve their out-of-warranty repair/replacement options. I couldn't do anything for my Chromebook Pixel once the warranty ran out, and I wouldn't count on them to randomly add a de facto additional year to the warranty like they did with the 6P, which was probably done because of its terrible, widespread battery issues.
> It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google.
I bought my 6p from Google. I paid for the extended warranty. It went into a boot loop after 13 months and they still wanted me to pay the $75 fee for a refurb phone. Remember: I paid $89 in advance for a 2 year extended warranty. This is for a well known issue in their hardware, that iirc they are being taken to court for.
I had purchased a new Android phone every year for many years at that point. I do Android development for a popular open source library/product.
They're banned now. No more Android phones in my house for a long time. Happy on the iPhone and know if I walk into an Apple store I'll actually receive support.
It sounds like they're pretty random with their support. In a way that's almost worse, if their support was fully broken then you could make your choice to buy or not based on that, but when it's 50/50 then you have to take a gamble.
My understanding is that even with the two year $99 Applecare+ for your phone, you have to pay them an additional $79 if your iPhone needs replacement.
Had a bad experience with google support as well. My 6p was bought from google store, had boot loop issue just about 2 weeks out of warranty, google support did not want to take responsibility, and huawei was kind enough to RMA the device for free. Google only started to offer RMAs when the issue was being spread by media. And they recently denied me again of the phone dieing with battery below 40%, said because the phone was repaired by huawei before. Sounds absurd to me, I basically purchased the phone from google store without any support.
And those were multiple tries with different support associates. I will stay away from google hardware products until there are substantial improvements.
I bought directly and was passed around by Google and Huawei support for months (and multiple calls; hours of my time wasted - why can't anyone just do support by email anymore?) before ultimately giving up on getting the constant battery issues addressed. Initial contact was precisely 3 weeks outside of the warranty period for the now well-documented phone shuts off when battery reaches [15|30|50]%.
I feel like I purchased a year's worth of problem-free phone experience for nearly $CAD900. To me, that's not great value.
Well, when you can. Pixel stuff wasn’t available in France for some reason, and Pixel 2 seemingly isn’t going to be either. That’s another area Samsung and Apple have nailed that Google is yet to crack on the hardware (and sometimes services) side: presence.
P.S: my Nexus 5 support story was stellar. With the Pixel promising but unavailable as a replacement I went for an iPhone 6S (not a 7 because I just invested in quality, jack’d audio hardware)
I bought from Google and they replaced mine on warranty after I (truthfully) described it as having been "run over by a car." I expected them to say no, but was very thankful that they helped me.
They did tell me that this was a one-time deal though.
My experience (multiple times) with Google's hardware support has really been nice. Every time they have helped me immediately, sometimes replacing the devices without asking questions or proofs etc.
It's also worth noting that Nexus line was more of a budget phone, whereas Pixel is a premium flagship. The extra cost is exactly for things such as better costumers support.
I don't understand people comparing a 350$ Nexus 5 phone to a 700$ Pixel phone, and saying that they're both by Google, and anything that applies to the first also must apply to the second. It's also like people blindly hating on support for paid products by bringing anecdotal evidence from support on free products. That's just not how things work.
The Nexus line was barely a Google product, it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight. That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google.
600$, compared to 800$ for a comparable Pixel phone. That 200$ difference is the premium you pay for good support. The Pixel doesn't really have anything else that the 6P didn't have.
Certainly so. They didn't really stand behind it, like they should have.
> it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight."
That counters the reality that these things were sold on the mass market to normal people without developer accounts and the accompanying "You'll shoot your eye out, dev" EULA.
It was advertised on TV, for !@!#$@ sake.
> That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google*
There aren't many devices out there, aside from the iPhone, that are supported from start and finish by one company.
Google clearly did not intend 6P to be either budget or 'developer' phone. They were very serious about the phone and spent a lot of money on advertising it to consumers in a number of countries.
Been android all my life. Bought almost every phone on the Google store. After the Nexus 6p experience -- I made an oath to my self to never buy another Google phone again.
From the onset it was broke. We are talking just a week after I bought, I started noticing a pattern of complaints about the audio clarity. I call support, what do I get? A refurb. Whatever, phone was just released -- probably gonna be a new phone. Two weeks later, another phone, same problem. I got used to it eventually, and worked around it. Headset, speaker phone, or whatsapp (for whatever reason) would fix the problem.
At first it was never Huawei again, whatever. But that changed. I called Google store again, one last time to complain. This time, they offered me a "buyers remorse refund". But then they retracted their offer as soon as the lady saw that I had it for a few weeks longer than 2 year. They told me the option wasn't available. But I kept asking them, why didn't you offer me this the second or third time I called? They never answered that one directly.
I am still so angry about this... I threw 600$ + 100$ for warranty at a company and for 2+ years I had a crappy phone that doesnt work when I call people. Done, never again.
I was put through the Huawei/Google ping pong. I don't know what the alternative is.
I bought a lot of Samsung notes, but they are outright negligent with monthly security updates. Samsung also famously introduced the Galaxy Note 2 a little over 8 months after I spent $900 on the Note 1 (which became a paperweight quickly due to faulty sim trays).
Almost all android manufacturers are negligent in creating good phones, and if they do, ruining them by not offering the required monthly updates that Google and Apple offer directly.
Android was a poor experience pre-gingerbread. Now, the changed UI's doesn't look much better than native android - product differentiation aside.
Google was onto something very good with LG and the Nexus 5 partnership. I'm encouraged to see LG building their phone again, and hope the HTC acquisition will improve the phone quality moving forward.
If google is serious, I hope they leave the XL with LG while they build the Pixel 3 with their new HTC subsidiary to get some experience under their belt before expanding.
I'm using an LG G6 for the past few months. The phone has been excellent. The phone updates are a few months behind and I'm reminded why I'll be probably heading back to a monthly security Android phone - at moment I believe it's the Pixels or a Blackberry.
I went for no-name Android phones for years now and can't complain.
First I had a Huawei Ascend Mate 7 (6") for 2 years, then a Huawei MediaPad X2 (7") for 3 years. Somehow they stopped to build big phones, so I switched to a Xiaomi Mi Max 2 (6.4") and I couldn't be happier.
I paid a fraction of the price of one of those Nexus/iPhone/Samsung flagship Smartphones and they all had what I needed, big display and big battery.
I've purchased my Nexus 5x just a couple of months ago. Since it's a two-year-old model, you can also get it for a fraction of a flagship model (~$200), and, well, since I've purchased it brand new, I still have a year of security updates + a warranty that lasts exactly that. And on top of that, pure vanilla Android experience + whatever Google comes up with in the meanwhile (for example, I have Google Fi, Pixel camera app, Android Oreo, fingerprint reader at the same spot as this $1000 phone).
Next year I might buy the Pixel (original, not 2). My point is, if that I continue with what I've started this year, I'll upgrade to the next two-year-old Google phone, receive the latest and greatest features (that non-Google-made flagship models still don't have at the time) and I'll receive upgrades constantly.
I think my first phone was the Motorola Micro Tac, which was revolutionary for price and size. It selled like hotcakes in Norway on release in .. 93? Then the Nokia 8110, which I loved - it had WAP! :)
Then (in Australia) I had the great misfortune of buying into Hutchinson's first 3g phone - the Motorola A920. Switched after a while to the Motorola Razr - awesome - upgraded to the SLVR L7 - and then I think the Nokia N85.
My first proper smartphone was an iPhone 3, jailbroke it, then switched to the Nexus One when it came out. That was one of my all time favourites; still have it, still works (sans sim). I've been on Samsungs pretty much since that, however, starting with their S2 - then Nexus 4 briefly (got run over by a car after 2 months, fell out of pocket and got completely squashed - I was gutted) - replaced it with the S4, then the S6 Edge and now the S8+.
Have no regrets for staying with Samsung in the past 6 odd years. Love the OLED screens.
On the occasions when I've been having issues I've received immediate service; latest was my old S6 Edge needing a new motherboard which was done same day at a Samsung Experience center (Melbourne Central). This was at 16 months.
I'll continue buying their products until such a time that they make me regret it. I've been lucky with my phones; no major issues other than Three phone due to the initial horrible state of the network and the rushed release of the phone.
I've been on Android since the DevPhone1, had to import it to Aus using a reshipper.
I got a Samsung Galaxy S when it first came out while on a trip to the UK. I've always thought Samsung made good hardware generally, but their insistance on fucking with the Android experience is what stops me really liking it. I don't want their S Notes or their S Calendar, etc. Putting a custom ROM on it tended to be a better experience than stock.
The current bullshit with Bixby is also not encouraging - I want a stock Android experience.
Up to the S4, and to some extent the S5 (#), I'll agree with you. Since the S6 I've actually found that I prefer the Touchwiz experience to the stock Android one. They've been ahead when it comes to certain features that I've come to like.
In the S8, there's hardly anything that's annoyingly Samsung. Minor exception for Bixby, but at least they let us disable the short presses now (for the button). Ideally they'd let us use whatever A.I. provider of choice; I'd prefer to map it to Google Now/Plus.
(#Just realised I forgot to add the S5 in between the S4 and S6 Edge in my chronology!)
it doesn't matter if we buy from google store, i was told the google hardware will send me a replacement 2 months back and i am still mailing for follow ups as i haven't got any response. on top of this every time i discus i get contradicting and time wasting response. i don't think anyone who needs to look at value for money factor would buy a mobile beyond 100$ or if possible 50$ and funny things is they have 80% of the features and definitely more than what we need.
> I witnessed my girlfriend's Nexus 6p support experience with Google and it was not pretty. I would never buy a Google phone after that. The phone, just barely out of warranty, goes into a bootloop and becomes a paperweight. Google helpfully shrugs the problem off on Huawei, and Huawei will of course not support the product since it's out of warranty. There is no repair option.
Something similar happened to my wife with her Nexus5X. Google shipped an update that bricked a ton of 5X phones, and Google stopped responding to her Customer Service emails.
We've been Nexus (specifically pure Nexus) users since the first Google phone. I own a G1, still in my closet. I own all of them (well, at least one of each generation). I own a Pixel XL as well. I'm done with Google, for this, and other reasons.
Another Nexus 5X user here and also dissatisfied. A while back, my phone stopped being able to answer calls. It rings, but no UI dialog appears on screen to let me answer. This is a known issue that I've seen on support forums, but nothing suggested there has fixed it. I've spoken with Fi support on multiple occasions and they've exhausted all options and now want me to wipe my phone hoping that will fix the problem.
I'm amazed at how poor the Android experience has been after years on iPhone. I'm still more amazed that Android is as popular as it is despite all this.
On the contrary, because I bought the Nexus 6P from the Google Store, they replaced it with a Pixel XL for free. The Google experience is terrible through a third party, but their Google 'direct' experience is pretty darn fantastic.
I can't fathom why the place where the device was purchased would matter if it's a Google phone. Apple manages to support iPhones whether you purchase them from an Apple store or in a back alley for bitcoins.
I know this is semantics, but it's fair. Apple doesn't manufacture anything, they design products and contract out the manufacturing to Foxconn. Basically the same as Google contracting out manufacturing to Huwei, only I think with the Nexus products it was more of a design collaboration than with the Pixel line.
Apple is the manufacturer that is honoring the manufacturer's warranty (and/or additional warranty options). Google is not the manufacturer of the Nexus 5X/6P, that's Huawei. So if you didn't buy from them, they send you to the manufacturer, like most retailers would after the initial return window, even if you did buy it from them.
I agree that it's bad for Google's image to operate that way, stick their name on a phone and then shrug their shoulders and tell you to talk to the real manufacturer. But that distinction is why Apple supports most iPhones no questions asked, and Google wants to know that you bought it from them. They're a glorified retailer licensing out their brand to Huawei.
I get it, but it's essentially Google wanting to have their cake (marketing to customers: "It's a Google phone! Pure Google all the way, baby!") and eat it, too (product support: "Uhhh, yeah, we uh, we don't make this thing, it's all Huawei, we're just a humble retailer."). I agree that it's absolutely bad for Google's image to operate this way, as you can see from the comments in this thread. People aren't mad at the OEMs Google paid to manufacture their devices, they're mad at Google.
> the OEMs Google paid to manufacture their devices
I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think that's how it was. LG's Nexus devices were manufactured by LG for LG, etc. The "Google" part of a Nexus phone is the software and some collaboration in the design.
It's really hit or miss. I've had to escalate to get my son's Pixel replaced twice now.
The replacement they sent has the wide-spread microphone issue out of the box, and I just haven't had the gumption to deal with yet another support experience.
I've had great luck so far with my Pixel XL and love it - one of the best phones I've ever owned. But the Pixel I bought along with it has been by far the most unreliable piece of hardware I've bought in a decade. It's really soured my opinion of Google, even though so far they have (grudgingly) replaced the item.
I'm dreading replacing it for the third time, as I know they will refer to their 2 replacements limit in their warranty contract. Zero of those replacements were anything but known hardware issues on the handset itself thousands of others have reported on-line.
I had the same great experience when my Nexus 5X had a boot loop. I have Google Fi and bought the phone through them. My phone died and next day I had a new phone. Great online experience too.
I've heard this story a number of times, but it doesn't match at all with my experience. Did she buy it from google?
I bought mine direct from google and the service was fantastic when I had an issue with my phone. I called them up, explained my problem, and 5 mins later they were sending me a replacement in the mail with a pre-stamped shipping package to send the old one back. I'm not sure what else I could ask for.
Why should that matter? My wife's iPhone was purchased from TMO. It had an issue so she took it into an Apple store and she came out with a new phone 10 minutes later.
What the parent is saying is that's precisely the difference. Your wife brought her phone to the manufacturer.
The Nexus phones were not manufactured by Google. If I don't buy it from the Google store, my buying didn't establish a commercial relationship with them. The Pixel phones, though, are manufactured by Google.
Disclaimer: Even though I'm a Google employee I have no idea how these things work. I'm just clarifying what the parent said, which sounds likely to me.
If you buy an iPhone, do you get a FoxConn logo on the back? Because my Nexus 5X has an LG logo on the back, not a Google one.
So yes, it's pretty different from an Apple phone. Unless you refer to yours as the FoxConn iPhone 6 or something, which would be a unique perspective on your part.
Because it was a "Nexus" - Manufactured by someone else, in 'collaboration' with Google. The first Pixel was also manufactured by HTC (and may be FoxConn eventually, who knows), but it carries the tag of manufactured by Google, so that should be supported regardless of where you buy it from. That's the first Google phone.
It's a Google product. So yes, she bought it from Google. Which store sold this Google product shouldn't be a factor in whether Google is willing to support it to the best of their ability, should it?
I thought the 6p was like other Nexus phones and Google was at most a reseller, so if you bought it from a different store, you'd go back to the manufacturer (Huawei).
I'm seeing a trend in this thread that a fair amount of Android users are needing to call up some sort of technical support for OS or hardware issues. Aside from the quality of support being debated, is this really a common thing in the Android world (even for savvy HN users)? I personally haven't seen that case in my Apple group of friends.
That's not a trend. It is the subject of the thread.
Here's my story.
Bought Nexus 5. Smashed screen in go-kart accident. Called Google to ask about repair; they offered to replace it for free. I still have that phone as a backup.
Bought Nexus 6p. Then bought another for wife. Both worked fine; we gave them to family members after two years.
Now have Pixel, Pixel XL for wife, and Pixel for daughter. They've all worked fine. Daughter got small scratch on screen, bought screen protector after that, no incidents since.
Standard disclosure: I work at Google. These experiences were all with normal retail devices, purchased with own money at full price, using personal Gmail accounts, with no special treatment as a Google employee.
My Nexus 5, purchased directly from google, stopped charging; I think something wore on the connector. I went through 7 or 8 cables and, if you held them just right, the phone would charge. Briefly. Support was a nightmare to deal with, including them insisting that I install the latest point update of the OS which would somehow magically cure hardware damage. On a phone that I couldn't charge. And that they wouldn't help with at all until I installed the stupid OS update.
Apple just doesn't treat customers like that. IME obviously.
I've had 5 android phones and never called anyone for any issues, although I have only bought Samsung and HTC.
Why Google ever did a licensing deal with Huawei is beyond me. They are controlled by the same Chinese government that won't allow Google to operate in their borders.
Bought an HTC Hero. Used it two years with no issues, besides lack of storage. With apps getting larger and storage issues cleared up with newer hardware, I needed an upgrade.
Bought a Galaxy Nexus. Used it for two years without issues. Would've continued with it for longer, but I was leaving Sprint.
Bought a Nexus 5. Used it for two years, with minor issues concerning wifi signal strength and wireless charging. The phone still works, and I keep it as a spare, but the wifi issues were especially annoying.
I've had an HTC One A9 for a year so far. No issues, aside from it being larger than I'd really like. I don't plan to replace it until I have a very good reason. Also have an iPhone 6 from work. It's nice, but harder to tinker with, which I think has always been Apple devices' shortcoming.
An iPhone gets OS updates for years and years, Google's flagship Pixel phone has two years of updates. Never would I spend that money on a phone that has so terrible support.
It's 3 years now for the Pixel 2[0][1]. This has been discussed before on HN, and it tends to fall on the reliance on Qualcomm as the chip maker, who is responsible for driver ports on any kernel upgrades. It's the reason Google kicked off project Treble[2].
Treble’s great, but overall it’s still not iOS competitive. For example, the iPhone 4S and 5 got 4 years and 10 months of OS support, and the 5S that launched 4 years ago got iOS 11 and presumably will get all the updates this year.
The "minimum 3 years support" for the Pixel 2 and the 4 years 10 months actual support for the iPhone 4S / 5 are not comparable numbers, exactly because one is the minimum they're promising (so it will apply from the date that the phone is discontinued) and the other is the maximum achieved (so it was measured from the model release date).
Anyone who bought an iPhone 4S at the end of its run only got 2 years of support. The iPhone 5 did much better though - 3 years 10 months.
For the the iPhone 5S to reach a minimum of 3 years support, it'll have to continue to get updates for another 17 months.
Google cut support relatively early for plenty of phones, including my Nexus 5. There were endless stupid excuses about chipsets, but the fact remains: nothing past 6.0.1. They barely supported it for two years.
IIRC Google cut support for the Nexus 4 whilst maintaining support for their tablet that used exactly the same chipset. One of Google’s Android engineers even did their own cut+paste builds for the Nexus 4 from the new Android release at the time.
Dropping support at that particular point in time was purely a marketing / management decision that wasn't driven by any technical considerations whatsoever.
When you do this kind of thing as a company over and over again, people notice.
Of course, it may be that it all came down to support contracts internally between Google and the Nexus device suppliers (the Nexus 7 blobs come via Asus, the Nexus 4 was an LG device that used the same Qualcomm chipset IIRC.) but that’s the kind of detail that end users really don’t care about: both were Google devices that Google sold & from the point of view of the end user Google dropped support for one device for no obvious reason as far as the end user can see.
1 - Google has a history of living up to the absolute bare minimum promised. Apple does not. Per history, one can assume that when Google says they'll support for 3 years they mean 3 years and one day, and Apple means about 5.
2 - Google has a history of whining as if they are absolutely powerless, broke, and incapable of affecting what Qualcomm or others do. At least when it suits Google.
Stories like this are the reason I will never switch from Apple products. I have personally have had nothing but outstanding customer service from Apple and have heard countless examples of products being fixed or replaced for free even when out of warranty without any hassles.
Switching to an Android phone to save $100-200 over the lifetime of a product that I use 1000 times per day, and risk bad customer service is just bad value.
It might be only in USA. Costs so high in India that I can but new android devices each year. Repair costs are high as well again could buy new devices instead of repairing it.
I had a similar experience and decided not to buy high-end Android phones: the modular (or fragmented) nature of Android's ecosystem doesn't lend itself for quality end-to-end experience. This is not meant to be a knock on Android. I exclusively used Android for the last 4 years, and I like Google's software, the choices on hardware, etc.
However, when it comes to end-to-end experience, Apple's vertically integrated approach is simply better. This is one of the key reasons I switched back to iPhone recently: I just want my phone to work and to be taken care of when it doesn't work.
Disclaimer: I work at Google but have nothing to do with any hardware team.
I bought a Nexus 6P from the Google store and had some issues. Out of warranty they replaced it with a new Nexus 6P. When that failed as well, they replaced the phone with a brand new Pixel XL. Each of these replacements was sent via overnight shipping at no cost to me.
I wouldn't call this a great experience because I wish the original phone never had the issue, but I can't ask for more from support.
Did you identify yourself as a Google employee? Just asking because re: consistency, I could believe a blue badge might pull some weight in that situation. Speaking from experience, badging at an Apple Store will often change a conversation, sometimes dramatically, despite that ability not really being intended at all. Neither here nor there, just a data point.
I guess experiences vary. Both times I broke my google phone they replaced it. We had some issue with setting up Project Fi, but again they ended up replacing it for free. I find that chatting works best with google support.
I had the same experience. My pixel battery was burning through it's battery at an extraordinary way, I contact support through the phone and got a replacement within the week.
A few months later I heard a rattle in my phone, turns out they sent me one that was part of a line that had an issue with a microphone component. Contact support and yet again it was replaced within a week.
> turns out they sent me one that was part of a line that had an issue with a microphone component. Contact support and yet again it was replaced within a week.
This is my issue. They have continually sent replacement refurbs that exhibited well known and common problems. This has to be done knowingly.
It's really made me think about an iphone for the first time ever. I refuse to use any non-nexus (or pixel now) Android since I care about software updates and shovelware, so it's either a Pixel or an iPhone at this point. Google shoveling me repeatedly known bad hardware just sits very wrong with me.
they have infinite data may be they have classified users and have a preferred set of customers who they love so much and take so much care of, do u buy lot of google products or have u subscribed to any google services. looks biased as still majority are having trouble based on the forums.
And the Pixel XL is the best phone I've ever used. Let's face it, everyone has good/bad experiences with lots of devices.
The iPhone 3G is the worst purchase I ever made, a month after buying it iOS 4 turned it into a barely functoinal brick with no ability to roll back the OS.
I've also had an HTC Amaze which was great, a Note 3 which was great, a Nexus 5 which was OK, etc...
No company always gets it right, even Apple. That being said, the Pixel XL was great, so I'll guess that this new one will be good too. Nexus 6p was a dud, Huawei doesn't make them anymore, Google re-branded and moved on...
I had a Nexus 5X die within the warranty period, and had a similar experience. LG's support was utterly awful, it took them 3 weeks to replace the phone.
They originally told me I could get a replacement 5X, then they told me I could get a T-Mobile G5 and what they eventually sent me was an AT&T specific G5 that required digging into config menus before it would connect to T-mobile LTE.
Big company support have lots of moving parts. My girlfriend's Nexus 5x also died this week. Local LG branch (Budapest) replaced the motherboard within a day. She basically got a new phone for free.
Yeah. I had similar issues with samsung and nexus devices.
Despite the removal of the headphone jack, I switched to an iPhone 7+. Had an issue with touch id, and they just replaced the entire screen for free while I hung out at the mall.
Between the privacy moves Apple has made, along with their awesome support, I can't see myself switching back.
Same experience here: a year ago my iPhone 5s had discoloration issues on the screen's edges. I booked a genius appointment, they replaced the screen for free, and after two hours I could pick the phone.
I also once had a problem with a new MacBook Pro (probably bad memory). Went to the Apple Store, I could either get a (new) replacement or my money back, no questions asked.
I used Android for a while when Motorola was a Google company and a brief period after they were purchased by Lenovo. My Moto X 2013 had spontaneous reboots, repair took one or two weeks and afterwards they wouldn't tell me the problem was. After a year or so, the Moto X started cracking spontaneously. I also purchased a Moto 360, which spontaneously cracked as well (known problem). Repair took one week, but the package disappeared in delivery. It took them two months (!) to send me a new Moto 360. Then there was the horror of the incredibly buggy Android 5.0 release on the Moto X 2014, which had a memory leak that killed background apps all the time.
I had an issue with a MacBook that was totally my fault. (I slammed my fist down on it frustration, tearing the SATA cable) Not only that, but I rolled in there and had an initial attitude at the lack of attention, only to discover I went to the wrong location from where I set my appointment. They took care of me, and replaced the cable for free.
This sounds terrible. FWIW, I have Project Fi and have had several excellent experiences with their support, including replacing a Nexus 5X that my wife dropped and then ran over with the car.
Project Fi's support has been nothing short of spectacular... I've had two slow activations (coming from StraightTalk) and they've spent 10-20 minutes on the phone with me until the problem was resolved.
As an aside, even if I get good customer service, these days I'm frankly tired of not having physical stores. Being able to walk into an Apple Store is a really tempting offer, compared to shipping a phone for repair and communicating through emails.
I've had two Android "support" experiences, so here's my anecdata:
1) My wife's Samsung phone developed an issue. We contacted Samsung and they RMA'd it and she had a brand new phone by the end of the week. Not Applecare, but it was fine.
2) Had an Android tablet with a minor battery recall. The manufacturer just sent me a second tablet and told me to keep both.
I hear about these kinds of horror stories but if you go in knowing that you aren't going to get Applecare, you don't look for it and you deal with it like literally any other consumer purchase you might make in your life, from refrigerators to cars and it's suddenly not a big deal.
I had the opposite experience. My Nexus 5X randomly stopped working (which it shouldn't have obviously, but a different discussion). Google were great to deal with. Got put through to a human very quickly and he just asked me to email a few photos of the phone just to make sure it wasn't smashed to pieces.
After I sent them, within a few days a brand new Nexus was delivered along with a return package for my broken one. They didn't even demand I send back the faulty one first. He said the idea was that you won't be without a phone in the interim (irrelevant in my case however as the phone was bricked).
When I broke my Nexus 4 or whatever it was called in 2012 or so, they wanted me to ship them my phone first to repair and give them a credit card authorization in case they had to send a new one, and then after they fixed it, I would get it back, maybe after 10 business days. This was all purchased from google’s own website.
After that I went with iPhone, simply because I know I can get it replaced or fixed within 2 days, but I have walked out of the store with a brand new one in 20 min before.
I specifically stayed away from the Nexus 6P because it was Huawei. Never buy anything Huawei- seriously, never. The Pixel is much more of a Google phone than the Nexus line was.
I had the Samsung Galaxy Nexus and then the Galaxy S5, both great phones. Definitely preferred the vanilla Android experience though, and the Pixel XL has been great for the past year. It is the best phone I've ever held, vastly better display than any iPhone. The Pixel 2 with no headphone jack is not going to work for me, but I expect to use the Pixel XL for 3-4 years anyway.
My experience with Nexus 6p support was very different. I bought my 6P at launch in 2015, it ran perfectly for a year and a half and then I noticed that it shut down at around 15% battery a couple of times. One phone call to Google, despite the fact that I was out of warranty, and then 2 days later a brand new Pixel XL (last year's model) showed up in an overnight FedEx. Could not be more pleased.
I bought my Nexus 5X used on Swappa. It finally bootlooped about a month ago. Called Project Fi support, they transferred the phone to my ownership in their system, and then issued an RMA and sent me a refurbed 5X. I was fairly surprised, as the phone was both out of warranty and bought used.
Why would you expect them to support the phone indefinitely outside of warranty or a support contract?
My Nexus 5X had a boot loop issue, I filed a support ticket, paid the deductible, and 2 days later I had a replacement phone in hand. Couldn't have been easier...
Had a similar experience but better opinion of Google's sorry. My wife's 6P entered a bootloop 5 or 7 days after the 1-year warranty expired. Google and Huawei said "sorry—your warranty expired." But I don't fault them. An expired warranty is, after all, expired. I ended up reselling the phone on eBay for $120. At least it's recycled: people use them for parts.
On the other hand, I actually loved Google's support. Reaching them on the phone was easy. No wait. At some point I had to step away to take care of my baby, so they said they would call me back in 30min, and the same rep called me EXACTLY on the dot when they said they would call. They didn't follow a script to the letter, with numerous unnecessary steps, but jumped ahead when I told them what I had tried to diagnose the problem. Overall, very efficient, quality support. Of course I was bummed the bootloop couldn't be fixed (I experienced it before it was a widespread issue) but I was honestly stunned how good their support experience was.
I ended up replacing the 6P by a Nexus 5X. I know I'll get good support IF I ever need it.
My wife's 6P entered a bootloop 5 or 7 days after the 1-year warranty expired. Google and Huawei said "sorry—your warranty expired." But I don't fault them. An expired warranty is, after all, expired.
How is this acceptable? The boot loop is most likely caused by a software bug that was not introduced by your wife (unless she was installing custom ROMs). Moreover, it is probably easy for Huawei/Google to repair the phone by reflashing the firmware.
Rather than going the extra mile for a customer who dropped $500+ on a device, they literally stick to the warranty period mandated by the law and leave you out in the woods.
100% terrible customer service. The bootloop was caused by flaws in the Snapdragon chip. The OSS fix is to basically disable half of the cores and run the phone in a crippled state.
I thought the Nexus 5 was the best phone I ever owned (I've owned many Android phones, across the spectrum, as well as several iPhones). It was a really great phone, for a while. After about 10 months the battery starting dying at 15% without warning, then eventually 20%, 30%, and finally 50% mid-run when I decided to put it out of it's misery. You could write it off as a one-time known flaw with the battery used by Huawei in this model, but this type of story is consistently my experience with Android products.
The applications are generally less polished, the hardware is better on paper yet fails to hold up in real life, and the battery life is abysmal within a year or less. It use to be the case that some of the sacrifices were worth it because flagship Android phones were considerably cheaper than their Apple counterparts, but that is no longer true either.
I'll be going back to Apple for the first time since the iPhone 4, now that they've finally killed the hideous 1980's CRT style bezel.
My support experience with the 6p was pretty good : when the battery became unusable they replaced the phone without asking too many questions (they just made sure I had followed all the basic steps to make sure that the problem was indeed hardware, even though I am a mobile engineer able to diagnose the device myself. I don't rely blame them for having to follow a script though).
Anecdotally my support experience with Apple has been atrocious :
-they refused to repair my mbp 2011 whereas it suffered from their well known design flaw in the GPU soldering and have a repair program for this model.
-they made me pay reparation fees for a mbp for which all the cooling system started malfunctioning while it was still in the warranty period.
I had a reverse experience with Google support. Me and my wife bought our Nexus 5x phones at the same time, me from amazon and she from Google. When mine bootlooped (under warranty), I was forced to contact LG and they did take the phone in but returned it back without fixing claiming "water damage". I read online that they were doing that for many customers to shrug off their responsibility.
When my wife's phone bootlooped (8 months out of warranty), Google shipped her a replacement phone for free! I swore myself away from buying any LG products after that.
That's interesting, because I had a friend who had the 6p, and when he ran into problems they replaced his phone with a brand new Pixel. Which is worth way more then a 6p new.
My girlfriend had the exact same experience with her Nexus 5x.
Fwiw there's a small open-source patch for affected devices that disables big cores (disables dual core I think) and fixes the bootloop but cripples the phone's performance.
Now, it looks like those issues are caused by the Snapdragon 808/810. The Pixel 2 uses the 835. I don't think it's been around long enough to know of any long-term issues, but I'm hoping it sucks less.
Opposite experience here: My 5x started boot-looping for no reason a few weeks ago, also out of warranty. I got a new on in the mail 3 days later, zero hassle.
FYI people may have negative customer support experiences because they insist on the phone with the operator. If someone is not solving your problem, hang up and call again. Eventually you will reach someone who will help. Once I learned this it saved me countless hours, thousands of dollars possibly and a lot of unnecessary frustration.
Expecting someone to need to call again until they find an amenable representative is the antithesis of good customer service. You may have found a method that is effective for you; that's great. One should not need to go to such lengths.
Alternatively you can just ask to speak to a supervisor as soon as the CS rep answers. It's not rude and they won't get blamed for screwing up if you don't say anything to them. Most of the time your problem will be solved or at least the supervisor won't waste your time with fairy tales.
Pixel was much better, except the XL 128gb had memory speed issues.
Google has gone back to LG to build the Pixel 2 XL, (similar to the Nexus 5) which was great. For that reason I'm probably going to get it - my dad still has and loves his LG made nexus 5.
I love my Nexus 5 and would probably love a Pixel 2 but it has no headphone jack. :(
I do an insane amount of long-haul flying and really rely on the 3.5mm jack for my noise cancelling headphones. I could get bluetooth headphones but they wouldn't work with in-flight entertainment when it's available.
I hope this whole no-headphone jack trend doesn't continue, I know the 3.5mm TNC isn't the best jack but if you don't want it because of bad waterproofing reasons or size/whatever can we just get a different analog jack with an adapter? Having the DAC built into the phone is required to keep things nice.
I know of a few options depending on the desired setup:
- There are USB-C to 3.5mm jacks. Probably the simplest. There are also Y cables that put out a USB-C charging port and 3.5mm.
- I own a Sony SBH54. Converts bluetooth into 3.5mm. Awesome to pair to my phone and laptop, hoping improved specs of Bluetooth 5 shoe up in a new device soon. I have been on Bluetooth audio with their SBH50 and MW600 - the audio quality has improved greatly. I wonder if there's a wireless external DAC.
I heard of an intriguing option yesterday - USB C Digital headphones where the signal remains purely digital.
LG has put dacs into the v20 and a variant of the g6, I kind of wish I had gotten a model with one.
I sense the no headphone jack is here to stay if the reason for it is true (allowing thinner phones).
My 6p worked fine. What turned me off google phones is that that i only bought it a year ago and it won't even get security updates beyond a year from now. Might as well be a brick then.
I had boot loop problems twice in less than 3 year span with two different Nexus phones one after the other! Nexus 4 and Nexus 5X. I gave up on Android after that. It sucks because I was a big Android fan. Not going back now even after the whole headphone jack fiasco with iPhone 7+
Had a Moto X 2013. Bought it because it was supported by Verizon (the only connectivity, some places I went/go), and with the Google purchase of Moto, was supposed to get timely updates on an ongoing basis. Well, not so much...
Switched to a Nexus 5x. After 1.3 years of rather gentle use, it bootlooped. I would attempt to get Google to deal with it, but it bootlooped days after I took pictures of flood damage (not mine, fortunately), and I hadn't gotten those pictures off the phone. Then, I got busy. Still hope one of the rescue approaches will let me get the pictures off, before I try to maybe get a replacement. Fuck the warranty, 1.3 years of use -- cut short by a known product defect -- is simply not acceptable.
I bought a cheap Moto G5 Plus to tide me over; figured I could dink around with it after I switched to maybe a Pixel 2.
At this point, and at those prices, I can't bring myself to give Google a premium price for that product.
Maybe if I find a cheap Pixel 1, I'll give Android one more go. Otherwise, it's Apple.
Even if Apple is pricey, I'll expect decent support and to amortize that cost over more than a year, two at the outside.
P.S. The Moto G5+ was widely heralded as "the" budget Android choice. And while the camera is definitely not top tier, it takes mostly ok pictures, and the phone otherwise functions decently. Even its IPS screen is no slouch.
It was already a bit behind, on Android 7.0 and not 7.1 . This caused me some concern, but I wasn't going to plop down e.g. full price for a Pixel 1 with the Pixel 2 just weeks away.
But now we have the Bluetooth... I forget the catchy name. The Bluemageddon. And I'm back to plugging in the speaker to listen to podcasts (fortunately, old enough to have a jack). The older FM adapter in the car, that has a jack; its replacement is Bluetooth only. (And I'm sorry, but my older car is in fine shape and I don't really need to replace it, nor to I wan to rip apart its rather nice integrated and apparently rather well-tunend stereo system.)
Anyway, at least the G5+ has an audio out jack. Because I don't know when the hell Lenovo is going to get around to shipping the Bluetooth fix to it.
So, basically, Google, if you happen to be reading this: Fuck all this.
I've also started to encounter interesting posts from developers who say that this kind of outlay for an Android device on which they can adequately test, is getting outside the realm of the reasonable. Not my bailiwick.
But if you're a small-time developer, and your iPhone bites it, seems you may actually get some support from Apple.
I tried Android early on, had similarly unacceptable support experiences, and whenever I'm tempted to dip my toes back in the water I'm reminded of how bad things are with cases like this. In the case of the Nexus 6p it's Google's flagship product and it's a worthless paperweight 13 months after purchase.