Google Pixel 6a

pixel devices are nice when they work. but damn hardware quality is shoddy in terms of aging. my pixel 6a battery got swollen with less than 3 years. I have a first gen iphone se still in use. I also had a pixel 3a that I couldn't find a screen replacement for luckily for me -- google accepted a trade in when the 6a got released. the pixels have a overheating problem -- this you can google for. oh yeah, when automatic android updates happen a bunch of your settings are reset even something simple as UI-theme.

I had a Pixel 6a with Graphene OS for a year before the phone started to glitch and eventually die. It ran pretty hot; sometimes it was hard to even hold the phone in my hands without burning myself. I could not get a replacement as I bought the phone in a foreign country (Google doesn’t sell Pixels here in Brazil). So as much as I love the idea of running a more private phone, I found the hardware extremely fragile and poorly designed, so I will not buy from them again anytime soon.

Portability is a feature. 6.7" have are so big and heavy they are annoying to carry on many pants or while doing many physical activities. I find my 6.1" Pixel 6a way too big already. I really loved the size of the Samsung Galaxy S6 that preceded it, I think it was the sweet spot at 5.1", large enough to read text, navigate on a map or watch a video while still being pocketable and light.

I recently switched phone (Pixel 6a with swollen battery to Xiaomi 13 (Shizuku solves most of the issues without installing custom ROM, which they made impossible through bootloader unlocking process)) and for now decided to not install Cromite yet, but keep Firefox which was offered in browser choice at beginning, still feel very annoyed by the new (not customizable) context menu, but they keep making it even more annoying like with blue persistent for telling you you had downloaded something as if regular notification wouldn't be enough and of course there is no way to get rid off the blue dot besides deleting download (record), just another annoyance or now they finally semi fixed home page with 8 pinned shortcuts, but despite not having anything else on home page you must still tap Show all, to see other shortcuts, why can't I show all the shortcuts directly on home page is beyond me so much for Firefox customization...

and those who care use Vivaldi it other alternatives anyway I recently switched phone (Pixel 6a with swollen battery to Xiaomi 13 (Shizuku solves most of the issues without installing custom ROM, which they made impossible through bootloader unlocking process)) and for now decided to not install Cromite yet, but keep Firefox which was offered in browser choice at beginning, still feel very annoyed by the new (not customizable) context menu, but they keep making it even more annoying like with blue persistent for telling you you had downloaded something as if regular notification wouldn't be enough and of course there is no way to get rid off the blue dot besides deleting download (record), just another annoyance or now they finally semi fixed home page with 8 pinned shortcuts, but despite not having anything else on home page you must still tap Show all, to see other shortcuts, why can't I show all the shortcuts directly on home page is beyond me, so much for Firefox customization

They sold me a Pixel phone with a broken battery (I think 6a? Where the battery fails after 400 charging cycles). I got an email and the offer to just get 100$ in cash from them instead of sending my phone away to get it fixed. I never received the money after filling out all the forms. Fuck google.

yeah pixel used to be great. probably the best phone I ever owned after iPhone SE was a Pixel 3a. till I got the abomination that was a pixel 6a. fucking overheated - then finally battery exploded. Other pixels suffer the same problems as well - overheating n display being finnicky.

I find it amusing the author with OnePlus 5T is looking for small phone since 5T was never a small phone even back in the days, so when there were much more small phones available author clearly didn't care and chose big phone - 156.1 x 75 x 7.3 mm, but suddenly now 9 years later when there are almost none small phone he requires significantly smaller phone. > Size. I've always felt like my OnePlus 5T was slightly too wide to use in one hand, so if my next phone was a little narrower, that would be great. Certainly I wouldn't want to get something larger. You can certainly buy plenty of phones which are narrower than 75mm other than S24 /S25 and Xiaomi 15, but you can't really buy small phones anymore. I just upgraded last year from Honor 10 (149.6 x 71.2 x 7.7 mm) to Pixel 6a (152.2 x 71.8 x 8.9 mm), basically the same width and it's funny screen:body ratio in Pixel 6a is better than following generations and hardly newest models finally match it again with hardly any improvement. Btw. author is wrong Xiaomi phones are nowadays extremely difficult to root/unlock bootloader, so your only options are pretty much Samsung S series with bad slow camera or Pixels infamous for their battery/display issues in almost every generation. Sony phones have even worse camera than Samsung and let's better not talk about the value for money.

Tell that to my Pixel 6a which hardly holds a charge over a day.

I loved my pixel 3a - it did the work then I upgraded to a 6a - overheating, battery exploded - google refused to change it coz it was bought in the uk - while I'm now in the US - as if I didn't trade my US bought 3a for a pixel 6a in the UK - some android version brought 2 photo apps - so I recovered some via the cloud - lost others finally gave up and moved back to using an iPhone - transition was easy - I recovered everything that was left intact on my iPhone SE before switching to a Pixel 3a so yeah f*k google phones

Can confirm on a Pixel 6a. Says September is the latest system update. Click check updates, says it's up to date, click check updates again, says it's preparing system update and hangs out for a while - then says it's downloading and installing a 781M update. WTF? Update: OK finally the update completes an hour later, even the reboot took longer than usual - says it's "updated to December 5, 2025" This phone running Android 16 for a bit over a month now.

I bought a pixel 6a and installed graphene os. I don't like their phones.

My last two Pixel phones - 6a and 7a - were both "recalled" with battery issues. I got almost a complete refund for both, and got keep the phone (my 7a died a few months after the recall, 6a is still going strong). I got a 9a to replace them just because I didn't want to have to deal with learning iPhone, but I'm fully expecting the 9a to fail with a similar issue so looking at buying an iPhone soon as a backup so I can get up to speed.

Also Google stuff always lacks SD card slots and have tiny storage. The $250 Motorola can add a $50 1 TB SD Card, which is enough to fit your entire music collection, all of wikipedia, and an offline ad-free routable map of the world from OSM, and still have probably like 700 GB left over for photos/videos. Google meanwhile charges $100 for a 128 GB storage upgrade. Probably because they want to funnel you into their cloud storage, want you to use their online maps/music services, etc. Phone cameras are also absolute trash anyway, and pulling up some comparisons in Google Photos right now, I'm fairly certain that my Pixel 6a takes obviously worse photos than my Nexus 5x did 10 years ago, even comparing high light for the 6a to low light for the 5x. I'll probably buy a Motorola when my current phone dies because the only ostensible reason to buy a Pixel is the camera. Or I suspect the real big-brained solution lives in the handheld gaming PC space.