Google must have embargoed Pixel reviews until today, but they're coming quickly now and look good.

My fiance -- whose middle name is "You Can Pry My iPhone From My Cold, Dead Hands" -- shared the Wired review with me this morning and admitted he might just have to consider a Pixel.

(Spoiler alert: The Wired review is written by a die-hard iPhone guy who admits to buying and returning several Android phones in the past. The Pixel has convinced him to finally make the switch.)

Yes, the embargo ended at 9 AM today. I've been enjoying the reviews.

The only remotely negative one was from Gizmodo, and the reasons given for that writer's negativity are puzzling to say the least.

Anyone else surprised that the Pixel isn't waterproof? (Or at least water-resistant enough to survive a short toilet bath?)

That's another barrier to my buying a $600 phone. I've had two phones go bad in the last 5-6 years where a tech opened them up and said "it's water-damaged". These weren't even cases where they'd had a submersion in shallow water...in both instances, I didn't know where the exact water damage occurred...it was just months of using the phone, occasionally being outside in the rain or near a minor splash on a table or something.

I don't need a phone I can go swimming/diving with, but I'd be hesitant to buy an expensive phone that isn't advertised as waterproof to *some* degree.

LG will release a phone only in Japan that I would've considered buying had it been released by T-Mobile in the US. Basically, it's a slightly smaller version of the V20 with IP67 water resistance.

http://www.droid-life.com/2016/10/18/lg-v34-vs-v20/

That is my biggest disappointment with its specs. It's IP53,which means it should survive getting rained on occasionally, but that's about it.

Yeah that one seems amazing, better than the V20 in my opinion. Shame it would be super hard to import.
I love to have one waterproof so i can go to the bathtub with it. Or place it nearby to hear some music and not worry that water will hit it, and the occasional glass spill when you are at a table and someone else's spills his/her drink and it hits your phone.

Rain for me... not much.. the toilet thing.. i've never dropped my phone there.
What has happened to me, but i think no matter what IP68 rating a phone may have... is that i dropped a Galaxy Nexus at the beach. It swam with the waves... until i picked it up and placed it in rice... and even if it was a 1 minute dive or more in salt water... it is still alive!

So long as an Android is not from Google or its direct subsidiaries it will not have official, extended OS support. Meaning, only a blessed few will have access to more than one or two update cycles (Not counting Samsung, where your entire phone gets upgraded if it's the hottest model). Google's Android division is just not organized for bundled support.

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/...-to-go-around/


I had much the same problem! Google Calendar would intermittently wake up my old Lenovo (Android 4.2) with constant alerts not to miss my flight to SFO - from years ago. No matter what setting or profile got tweaked, I couldn't disable Zealous Mode on that thing.

Be sure to get the right droid, or you'll end up bedding a booby with a mind of it's own.

Still being the indecisive type, and left with too much time before my Pixel preorder ships in November (idle hands being the devil's playthings, and all), I'm back to wavering toward the V20. My AT&T store has them in stock early.

It's really tough for me this cycle to decide between AT&T's wifi calling, VoLTE, and HD Voice features on the V20 vs the Pixel XL's timely Android updates.

I'm still wary of LG's bootloop issues, but if I get the V20 I'll get it on the Next plan which gets me a new phone in a year so I don't think that it will be an issue. The V20 will be cheaper (I can trade in my ancient Galaxy Note 2 and get a $200 credit) and I can get a "free" (free, with 2 year contract at $10 month for LTE) tablet to give my kids.

Ahhh, decisions, decisions. Why couldn't I just be an iPhone guy? :D

So my LG G5 which I've loved is now giving me GPS issues, and Googling indicates this is a common issue. What I find really annoying about LG is they make great phones but they invariably have bone-headed issues that don't really get taken care of. I bought through the official importer so I called and a technician is coming Tuesday to my office to try and fix it, but we'll see. From what I can tell, once the GPS goes, you need a new phone (the "fixes" suggested don't seem to work for the vast majority, and the software issues didn't fix it for me).

I'm thinking this may be my last LG :(

I had the same issue with my LG G2. Sometimes the phone would not get a GPS fix for over two hours and more than 100 miles of driving rendering it useless for navigation purposes. Of course, this issue developed right after the warranty ran out. They offered to inspect it (but have me to ship it to them at my expense) to determine if they were willing to offer a goodwill repair. That would have meant being without a phone for almost two weeks.

Then my daughter's G4 developed the infinite bootloop issue.

We both switched to Samsung, S7 and S7 Edge, and never looked back.

Thanks, that took me back off the V20 waver. :D

Patiently (or not so patiently) awaiting my Pixel!

LG phones have a very long history of being unreliable. I'm thinking way back to the VX10 and VX4400 and the display issues that they had. I can only remember a handful of their phones that haven't had a problem, and the problems that they had tended to be less of an inconvenience and more of a "I can't use this at all" catastrophic failure.

My G3 developed a boot loop issue and suddenly stopped connecting to WiFi and Bluetooth. No warranty for me, so new phone.

My G5 is under warranty and they're coming to my office Tuesday to check it out. But if this continues to be an issue, looks like I'll be done with LG.

My issue with Samsung has been in the past how heavy Touchwiz is. I also find they tend to overprice their phones (at least by me, they're much more than LG), and I appreciate a removable battery - I have 3 for my G5, and I use them, especially when I won't be around a charger. More convenient than portable charger.

As for TouchWiz, it is much less overbearing than it used to be. With the new "Grace UX", which was present on Note 7 and is coming to S7 and S7E, it's really not awful. With the Good Lock app you can make it look a lot like AOSP without losing the positive features of TouchWiz. That said it still does weigh heavily on the processor and RAM.

The current version of TouchWiz is no more overbearing than the LG overlay skin. I tried the Good Lock app for a couple of days. Unlike SRQ Guy, I hated it and went back to TouchWiz after a couple of days.

I agree with you as far as the removable battery, although I've rarely had a problem with the 3600mAh battery on the S7 Edge lasting all day even when I spent all day walking in Europe while using the phone as my electronic travel guide and for navigation without having an opportunity to recharge it.