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After delighting first-gen Pixel owners with an update to Android 10 — a one-year extension beyond Google's original two-year promise — the company is cooking up another surprise for the OG Pixels. Initially thought to have reached the end of the road in terms of security patches at the closing of October, the original Pixels will receive one final OTA update in December that will include improvements from November and December.
Over the past few weeks, some owners of the 2016 Pixel XL have reported problems using quick chargers on Android P. For most of that time, Android P was still in beta, so bugs were to be expected. Unfortunately, issues with quick charging are still present in the final 9.0 release.
It was just Independence Day in the States, and normally a holiday week threatens to be a slow period for tech news. But even with workers taking a few days off, the discounts and sales have shown no sign of slowing down, and this week we've got a bumper crop of offers for you to peruse.
Phone batteries keep getting smaller and smaller, but if you need a little more juice in day-to-day usage, an extended battery case is one option. ZeroLemon is known for making great battery cases, and the company's Pixel and Pixel XL cases are at an all-time low on Amazon. The Pixel case is now $27.99, and the Pixel XL case is $41.99 (once you factor in the 30% coupon for each). That's a $13 and $16 reduction in price respectively from the usual cost.The Pixel case has an extra 6,500mAh of battery capacity, but is rather thick at 0.88 inches. If you don't mind having a literal brick in your pocket, you'll likely get at least twice the Pixel's normal battery life. The Pixel XL case has an even bigger 8,500mAh battery, and comes in at 0.9 inches thick.Both cases have a soft TPU covering, and both have USB Type-C ports for charging. That's always nice to see, especially considering many battery cases (even iPhone ones) use microUSB. The only major downside to these cases is the lack of quick charging, so topping off the massive batteries will take a while.
The Google Pixel is a notoriously hard phone to get a hold of. Persistent stock issues have plagued Google's first "in-house" handset from day one, and things really are little to no better six months after the launch event. Honestly, it's a bit embarrassing just how consistently incompetent Google seems to be at keeping a reasonable inventory of phones available for purchase. But setting that aside, as one of the Pixel's most ardent evangelists, I think there's something it's probably time for me to come clean on: Even if you could buy a Pixel today, I really think you shouldn't.
According to sources familiar with T-Mobile's plans, the company will announce either today or tomorrow that the Google Pixel will be displayed in some T-Mobile retail locations. The device will not be sold at T-Mobile retail locations (or T-Mobile's website). Instead, store employees will direct customers to the Google Store (and help them with the process) or Best Buy to complete their transaction. The "carrot" for T-Mobile here is obviously that it hopes to gain subscribers, and sales reps will be pushing the provider's current Pixel promotion as part of the pitch to customers. It is unclear if T-Mobile eventually plans to sell the phone directly.
As Cody found in his teardown of Google Photos v1.21 back in March, and Carphone Warehouse listed in its 'gone-live-early' promotion page, Google has announced free, unlimited photo storage for anyone who buys a new Google Pixel phone. This means any photos you take will be backed up to Photos at the original size, and not the "high quality" size that is uploaded by default. That's not all: 4K videos, which the Pixel phones can shoot, are also supported with unlimited storage and no quality decrease.
