Read this and save yourself an hour of headache with your new Pixel 3:
Pixel 3 arrived today (White, 128 Gb) and the Out of Box Experience was a great disappointment. Last year, I ordered the new Pixel 2 and returned during the 2-week return window because it would not work with my trusty Plantronics Voyager BT headset that works with everything (else). Google had no idea what the issue was and I think they never resolved BT connectivity for many headsets. So I was excited to order the P3 and looking forward to erasing the bad taste.
The instructions say move the SIM card, plug the phones together and transfer everything. What the instructions do NOT say is that this method ONLY works if the OLD phone is also running Android 9 Pie. We are talking DATA transfer. What happens is that you go through the setup steps as instructed on the new P3, then ... nothing happens. The old phone requests permission to transfer data, then says "Preparing..." forever. After 15 minutes, I tried a different cable, ultimately trying 4 cables, both with and without the included P3 USB adapter, all with the same result.
I contacted support, having paid for that when I ordered the phone. After about 15 minutes, I learned that the cable method only works if you have Pie on the old phone. Other than a handful of Pixel users, NOBODY will have Pie on their old device. You would think that a cutting edge software giant could program the P3 to give an alert, "Hey, you have Oreo on your old phone, so ditch the cable."
Google support suggested that I simply update my old phone to Pie! Who trains these guys? Verizon - and probably everybody else - don't even have Pie updates available for my phone (LG G6) nor for most other phones. Plan B - backup everything to Google Drive and then download to the new phone. I use Verizon Cloud to back up my texts and calls - Google already has enough info about me - so they didn't download.
Next step: call Verizon support. I pay for VZW Cloud storage, so it should be easy to download everything to my P3, right? It took an hour for then to get us there - although the support folks were awesome.
Not quite like upgrading to a new iPhone: insert SIM, download from iCloud and your new phone instantly looks like your old phone. But then, it's an iPhone and you can't really customize it.
So BEWARE: unless your old phone is running Pie, don't waste time trying to follow the Google instructions.
I am still downloading VZW backups, so have no idea yet what it is like to use the phone.
Pixel 3 arrived today (White, 128 Gb) and the Out of Box Experience was a great disappointment. Last year, I ordered the new Pixel 2 and returned during the 2-week return window because it would not work with my trusty Plantronics Voyager BT headset that works with everything (else). Google had no idea what the issue was and I think they never resolved BT connectivity for many headsets. So I was excited to order the P3 and looking forward to erasing the bad taste.
The instructions say move the SIM card, plug the phones together and transfer everything. What the instructions do NOT say is that this method ONLY works if the OLD phone is also running Android 9 Pie. We are talking DATA transfer. What happens is that you go through the setup steps as instructed on the new P3, then ... nothing happens. The old phone requests permission to transfer data, then says "Preparing..." forever. After 15 minutes, I tried a different cable, ultimately trying 4 cables, both with and without the included P3 USB adapter, all with the same result.
I contacted support, having paid for that when I ordered the phone. After about 15 minutes, I learned that the cable method only works if you have Pie on the old phone. Other than a handful of Pixel users, NOBODY will have Pie on their old device. You would think that a cutting edge software giant could program the P3 to give an alert, "Hey, you have Oreo on your old phone, so ditch the cable."
Google support suggested that I simply update my old phone to Pie! Who trains these guys? Verizon - and probably everybody else - don't even have Pie updates available for my phone (LG G6) nor for most other phones. Plan B - backup everything to Google Drive and then download to the new phone. I use Verizon Cloud to back up my texts and calls - Google already has enough info about me - so they didn't download.
Next step: call Verizon support. I pay for VZW Cloud storage, so it should be easy to download everything to my P3, right? It took an hour for then to get us there - although the support folks were awesome.
Not quite like upgrading to a new iPhone: insert SIM, download from iCloud and your new phone instantly looks like your old phone. But then, it's an iPhone and you can't really customize it.
So BEWARE: unless your old phone is running Pie, don't waste time trying to follow the Google instructions.
I am still downloading VZW backups, so have no idea yet what it is like to use the phone.