Zorak

Huawei agreed to an RMA with very little fuss ^ so it may work out.

Although the SIM card doesn't work in my Sprint phone (not sure if Sprint issue or network bands, the phone may or may not be unlocked) at least I can make and receive phone calls and SMS via Hangouts/Hangouts Dialer as long as I have wifi.

eeflyer

Thats good to hear! When did you purchase the phone and from whom? Did you also purchase extra warranty or anything like that?

Zorak

I bought it from newegg last July, no extra warranty.

strickerj

Slightly OT, but my wife and I have had our Nexus 6Ps for barely a year, and they're both now borderline unusable - the latest Android update introduced major lag and instabilities, and the batteries have deteriorated to the point of shutting down without warning at anywhere from 20 to 40% indicated remaining. We've had flagship Android devices for years now (Galaxy S4, Note 2, HTC M8, Sony Xperia Z2, and now these), and none of been this unreliable. I'm disappointed to the point of considering switching back to the iPhone.

Zorak

In the course of my web searches yesterday I saw that there's a class action against Huawei and/or Google pointing the finger at each other and forth leaving consumers in the lurch. This seems somewhat ambulance-chasing but I guess if the two companies are just passing the buck back and forth maybe this gets them to do something about it. I think most class actions mostly make the lawyers rich though?

I have yet to receive the actual RMA label (they said it would be emailed within 2-3 days and I should expect it Friday).

strickerj

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that. Agreed on class actions, but sometimes there's no other way to get a company to respond. I've also never had a return (with any company) where the RMA label wasn't automatically emailed immediately - 2 to 3 days seems kind of absurd. Good luck!

Zorak

So this turned into somewhat of a Kafkaesque nightmare.

5/16: original call. Promised RMA label within 72 hours, i.e. Friday

5/19: promised within 24 hours

5/22 10:30am: I explained my frustration and asked if I could stay on hold until I received the label. The agent confirmed they had all the necessary information already, and after a few minutes came back to say they had spoken with the person who generates the labels and it would be issued within 15 minutes but that they could not wait on hold with me.

5/22 11:30am: I called again, coincidentally got the same agent, and very politely but firmly explained that the call was going to end one of two ways: either I would have an RMA label in my inbox or I was going to rate my experience accordingly. I was on hold a few times, first with them saying the return label generating person claimed to have sent the label, claimed they had sent it again, claimed the return person had sent the label to him and he was now trying to forward it to my email, claimed he had sent it again, none of which resulted in any actual label appearing in my inbox. I was privately giving up hope around this point when he said "ah, I just got a confirmation that the customer's shipping label has been generated" and a second or two later it hit my inbox

I don't *think* there was any bad faith on the part of the 3 agents I spoke with, but either their system is horribly broken or they are lying or being lied to. *Some* of this could be language barrier, but I don't think so -- although the recorded greetings and all 3 agents spoke with distinct Russian or Eastern European accents, their English was of an extremely high level.

I am starting to understand why there is a class action :-/ And while I have the return label and will return the phone for processing, who knows how long that will take, so I'm saying F that and buying a Pixel XL directly from Project Fi. If I get the 6P back while civilization still exists I will try to foist it off on mom or sell it on eBay or something.

strickerj

Jeez, sorry to hear all that... Considering the issues that the last Nexus and now the Pixels are having, I'm certainly not buying another Google branded phone any time soon. We're just about ready to give up on our 6Ps - my wife wants the HTC 10 since she had a good experience with her M8, and I'm thinking I might go back to the iPhone, much as it pains me, lol.

Zorak

Project Fi was willing to ship me a replacement 6P in advance, until they found out I didn't buy the 6P directly from them. So I figure buying a Pixel directly from Fi at least gives me that buffer if any future issues arise...

boerne

g.co/fi/flywithfi

Free gifts for subscribers at the mentioned airport locations. get it while you can.

tmiw

The one at SJC's been around for a while. Has there been any indication that it's going away at any of those locations?

TEDisgone

I have started to notice over the past two months that my 6P will randomly reboot (but not the bootlooping issue) - I realize it when I use the fingerprint scanner and it asks for my PIN instead. This week I experienced a system freeze for the first time and I could not get it to restart. After about 10 minutes I tried again and got it to do so. It's running fine but battery endurance is noticeably down and I haven't used it any differently than usual.

Now, I see that Android version updates end September 2017 (security updates end September 2018) and that the Pixel 2 is rumored to be out in October 2017... Scheduled obsolescence?

With no international travel scheduled for the next few years I'm starting to wonder if moving to the iPhone on a MVNO is the way to go.

richarddd

Android will occasionally ask for a PIN for security reasons, even if you don't reboot.

I've seen many complaints about battery life (usage patterns and phone age seem to drive this), but a 10 minute freeze is a new one for me.

Android has had a two year version update policy for a long time. Google tends to announce a new phone every year. There are many third party ROMs that will provide version updates after two years, if you want to go down that path.

Why are you bundling phone choice and carrier choice? In most countries you can buy a local SIM for a reasonable amount that you could use with any modern unlocked Android phone or iphone.

Zorak

Followup to my previous post:

5/23: dropped off at UPS store
5/24: delivered to their repair center in DFW
5/26: notification of return shipment created, UPS next day saver
bearing in mind this was Friday before the long weekend
5/30: UPS tracking indicates they mis-sorted the package and it's now in NOLA
6/1: delivered

The phone I received back has the same serial number as the one I sent in, so guess they were able to revive it. It's in a factory reset/initial setup condition, although whether that's something they did and/or the remote erase request I made from Google's Android device manager UI I don't know.

So the turnaround was pretty good (can't blame Huawei for the UPS snafu) but getting the RMA label was so painful this has pretty much turned me off of this brand I think.

The strangest part is that the return shipping box contained (1) my phone and (2) a fairly plain but Huawei-branded ballpoint pen, except that the pen was completely disassembled and the constituent parts were just lying loose in the box. /shrug

strickerj

As richarddd said, it will have you enter your PIN periodically anyway - when it does, note whether the message says "PIN required for additional security" or "PIN required when device restarts".

I've also experienced the 10 minute freeze-ups (just have to wait it out as far as I can tell), and my wife has had the random reboots, though I've managed to be spared that particular issue. I now have an iPhone 7, and my wife has an HTC 10, and so far we're both quite happy. (The Nexus 6P was a bit unwieldy for me anyway, and I found the location of the fingerprint scanner inconvenient.)