Add MobilityArena as a preferred source on Google
Dayo and I are forever discussing smartphones. One of our pet peeves has been how Google cripples it’s Pixel smartphones in annoying ways. As a matter of fact, it was as if Google had made a pact with the gods of mobile that it would never make cutting edge features available on its models. How do I mean?
Take any one of the Pixel models from the very first all the way up to the last model before Pixel 6 Pro, and none of them has cutting edge fast charging. You just have to make do with 18W fast charging, at the best. 18W quick charge is like the odd cousin of fast charging: it is neither slow nor really fast.
If you have never used 33W quick charge, you probably would not get the picture. But consider that there are phones with 67W quick charging out there already, and you just might get a picture of how painfully slow 18W is.
I understand that this limitation on fast charging is done to preserve the battery. Ho-hum. Anyway, in this year of our Lord, 2021, Google finally bumped it up to 30W. Only that it wasn’t quite 30W. In reality, the Pixel 6 Pro charges at 23W speed. Not quite the same as 30W, but thank the gods, users do not have to suffer with 18W any more.
Related to charging speed is battery capacity. Google phones were not known for outstanding battery life. As a matter of fact, Dayo and I suspect that Apple and Google made a pact with the devil to starve users of their phones of long battery life. “Keep them chained to their chargers,” the devil whispered to them, “and I will make you rich.”
Whatever the deal was, Pixel phones, while not as poorly as iPhones, generally had battery life that registered at the lower end of the spectrum. This was until the Pixel 5a 5G showed up this year. That was the last model before the launch of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
With a 4680 mAh battery, the 5a 5G arrived with exemplary battery life right up there with some of the best. Never before in the history of Pixel phones had there been a model with that much juice or longevity.
Google Pixel 6 Pro
The Pixel 6 duo have good battery capacities too – 4614 mAh and 5003 mAh respectively for the non-Pro and the Pro models. The battery life results in real use are not as fantastic as I was expecting, buy they are good numbers, even if not at the top. The summary is that we now have a new generation of Pixel smartphones with solid battery life.
What of performance? Despite charging a premium for their devices, Google decided to use a mid-range chipset in the Pixel 5. Sigh. You just couldn’t have the best of everything with Google. They always crippled the phone woke way or the other.
The Snapdragon 765 chipset is the very same one used in the Pixel 4a and 4a 5G. I am so rolling my eyes. Not to mention how they used the same camera modules in multiple models in the last few years.
With Google, it was best not to expect too much besides good cameras and on-line software updates. Everything else was game for experimentation in how not to experience cutting edge specs and features.
If you are looking forward to the next Samsung flagship, you know you will be getting the most advanced and most powerful of everything possible (sans the fastest battery charging). You could not be sure with Google.
Like Google, like Nokia
One other phone maker has been aping this habit of crippling their devices: Nokia. And it will hurt them. There is no reason why the Nokia X20 , for example, should be using a Snapdragon 480 chipset and 18w charging, when competing devices at its price point use much more powerful chipsets and have even faster charging standards.
As we are seeing, Google is breaking away from that practice of limiting its devices. One can only hope that Nokia adjusts too fast enough. The Nokia brand name is still fairly powerful, especially among older mobile users, but it won’t be enough to keep people from comparing specs and wondering why they are getting much less than phones from competitors.
Pixel 6 Pro: taking the leash off
But from what we have seen this year, 2021 seems to be the year that the company wants to shed that reputation. The Pixel 6 Pro is a proper premium flagship: it even has 12 GB of RAM! Shock! Horror! With previous models, minus the Pixel 5, you had to manage 6 GB RAM at the most.
Even in the photography department that Google was once celebrated, over the last few years, the Pixel phones lost massive ground to competing devices that came to the fight with their own versions of computational Photography and multiple cameras. Google was stuck with dual cameras on their devices and those could no longer compete in a world of triple and quad cameras on cutting edge devices. Again, the Pixel 6 Pro changed that by showing up with a triple camera at the back.
The Pixel 6 Pro is a breath of fresh air. We have a top-end Pixel device with a flagship-grade chipset, a copious amount of RAM, a hefty battery, and competitive cameras, among other things. The Pixel line never looked so good. In more ways than one, the 2021 Pixel 6 Pro is a paradigm change for Google phones.
The lesson here is similar to the lesson with Apple in the last few years of the iPhone: no matter how distinct and unique you seek to make your products, you have to at the very least bend to the demands of the market to stay competitive. Dayo and I love how Google has adapted to the market’s demands with the Pixel 6 Pro.
- Don’t miss our reviews .
- Join our WhatsApp Group , to be notified of the most important articles and deals,
- Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , and YouTube .
Author:Mister Mobility
Digital Skills and Communication Coach | Mobile Phone Connoisseur since 2001 | Tech Blogging since 2004
Add MobilityArena as a preferred source on Google
For some reason, there are certain things that smartphone reviewers either ignore or decide are not worth mentioning. For example, I have read and watched tons of iPhone reviews and observed that this happens with iPhone reviews a lot. I am also seeing it happen with the Pixel range of phones: there are certain niggles that do not get mentioned. So, here I am doing the community service that you all love me for, and I am here to say that before you buy a Google Pixel phone, you need to know about this issue that is capable of frustrating you, and even costing you dearly.
Modern smartphones are powerful. It is a miracle that so much computing power can be fitted into these small slabs. One of the consequences of that is heat. Smartphones generate heat. The more powerful they are, the greater the chances that they will warm up significantly. We already have tips for you, should your phone heat up , so check that out if you haven’t before now.
The engineers at Google are smart and came up with a built-in feature to protect your Pixel phone from damage when it heats up. It isn’t a case of if it heats up, but when. Because from all my experiences with Pixel phones, they warm up significantly under fairly prolonged use. All the ones I have handled. So, the engineers at Google built something into these phones so they can protect themselves – even against your will. And that is where the problem is.
Below is an excerpt from Google’s documentation about Pixel phones; it spells out how your smartphone protects itself when it gets too warm or hot.
How your Google Pixel phone protects itself
Your Pixel phone may start to limit some functions when it senses it gets too hot. These include:
- Slow down.
- Slow charging.
- Turn off your camera’s flash.
- Disable your camera.
- Partially or fully turn off your mobile data or Wi-Fi, including 5G.
If your phone’s temperature keeps rising, it could show a warning and turn off. The phone turns off to keep you and your phone safe. If your phone turns off, let it cool down and restart it.
If your phone continues to turn off, contact Pixel support . Source : Google Support pages[1]
Real-life Implications
The real-life implications of the above automatic protective feature is that sometimes, while using your Pixel phone as a hotspot, it overheats, and while you are in the middle of an important document or strategy session, the crazy phone disconnects you from your mobile network. You go offline and have to wait till the powers that be on the inside of the phone decide that it is safe to turn it back on. Aaaaargh!
I have spoken with at least two Pixel owners before writing this article, and both of them confirm that this happens with their phones. The most common is the disabling of charging if the phone gets hot while plugged in. I am all for this. a hot phone in the middle of a charging session is a potential explosion or fire incidence.
But I cannot wrap my head around a situation where I am using my smartphone as a wireless hotspot, and it disconnects me. What?! My Xiaomi Mi Note 10 Pro gets pretty warm during use and has never once cut me off or shut down. Imagine carrying out a mission critical download and your phone shuts you down.
I do not know about you, but I do think that you should know if you are looking to buy a Google Pixel phone. It might not be a dealbreaker for you, but it is something that you should know, so you can find workarounds to prevent yourself from being thrown under the bus by your smartphone. An example of a workaround is to get a MiFi device for your hotspot needs. I strongly recommend not to use your Pixel phone as a hotspot, unless in you are in freezing weather.
Workarounds
If you live in the deserts or cities of the Middle East, North Africa, or anywhere else in the tropics, for example, don’t buy a Google Pixel smartphone if you need to use your phone as a hotspot. That is a bad idea. It will heat up, and it will decide whether to disconnect you, or worse, totally shut down.
An override toggle, buried somewhere in the phone settings, would be nice, for those extreme emergencies in which you absolutely need to get something done within a few moments or minutes and need for your smart smartphone to not go Terminator on you.
Hold it! Is it possible that this is one of the reasons why Pixel phones are not on sale outside certain countries? The Pixel 5a 5G is officially available in the USA and Japan only. The Pixel 6 series is limited to the U.S., UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, Taiwan, Germany, France, and Ireland, the same as the Pixel 5 was. Nah; it cannot be. The northern part of Australia is hot enough; innit? But really….
If you are looking to buy a Google Pixel phone, now you know one more thing that you should about it. If you are an existing user, you already knew this. Sorry; but there is no solution besides keeping your phone in a cool environment. If you live in the tropics and own a Pixel smartphone, may the gods be with you.
References
Google support pages (link)
- Don’t miss our reviews .
- Join our WhatsApp Group , to be notified of the most important articles and deals,
- Follow us on Instagram , Facebook , Twitter , and YouTube .
Author:Mister Mobility
Digital Skills and Communication Coach | Mobile Phone Connoisseur since 2001 | Tech Blogging since 2004
