> I don't want to mail my phone in to a repair center and be without a phone for a few days.
FYI: I've been a long time Android user and can tell you that the process works different. And is actually not as bad as you think.
1) You call the hotline, they send you a link via mail
2) Clicking this link will place you in their shop with a promo-code
3) You buy the replacement phone
4) Once you've got the replacement you send in the broken one (or if you feel like it earlier)
5) Once they recieved the broken one, you get a refund on you purchase
Knowing this process so well is the reason I've bought me an iphone 7 now ;-)
I had an HTC One with a defective camera and HTC had no process like this. I would have had to send them the phone and wait.
Verizon helped me out and sent a refurb phone without me having to return my phone first. The refurb camera was even worse.
After that I went iPhone. No reason to pay the same price for Android and get crappy service, especially when the iPhone has resale value. A used Android has no resale value whatsoever.
However, if the Pixel is like other Androids the list price is a joke and carriers will be discounting it shortly.
I wonder if the Pixel will have good resale value. It seems just as well-built as an iPhone, but unless Google changes its update policy, the Pixel won't be able to run new versions of Android after two years. That is a huge drag on resale value.
I don't know about you, but if I was in the market for a used phone, I'd go for one that could run the latest OS.
The Pixel seems to me to be a vindication of the Apple model: controlling both the hardware and software can get you a pretty good product, and in the case of upgrades, you only have to support the hardware that you yourself have released. There is no technical reason Google can't support the Pixel phones for years, like Apple does, but I doubt they will do that.
Indeed, google on promises 2 years. But are typically much more generous. For instance the nexus 5 came out in Oct, 2013. It got marshmallow, but not nougat. I suspect it would have (it has plenty of ram/cpu), but for whatever reason qualcom didn't update the video driver for the snapdragon 800.
If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat.
> If it really bothers you the open bootloader makes it easy to find AOSP built from whatever community that floats your boat.
Or I can buy an iPhone and run the latest software with zero effort.
That is a big difference, especially when you consider that the vast majority of consumers would have to look up the terms "AOSP" and "bootloader" after reading your comment, and even after looking them up, would have no idea what to do.
I should have added that I had this process with multiple nexus devices, thus my "shop" was google. I would expect them to handle the pixel phones the same way.
FYI: I've been a long time Android user and can tell you that the process works different. And is actually not as bad as you think.
1) You call the hotline, they send you a link via mail 2) Clicking this link will place you in their shop with a promo-code 3) You buy the replacement phone 4) Once you've got the replacement you send in the broken one (or if you feel like it earlier) 5) Once they recieved the broken one, you get a refund on you purchase
Knowing this process so well is the reason I've bought me an iphone 7 now ;-)