Why is everyone dissing the pixel 6/6pro?

[David Thomas24]

thanks am thinking about picking up the pixel 6 my self has am on T-Mobile my self

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

To answer OP's question; expectations are really high for Pixels. This isn't a phone from some two-bit company, it's from the company that makes Android and is one of the largest tech companies in the world. With Apple nailing the execution on their phones year on year, the expectation is that Google are able to deliver the same.

I've had the 6 Pro since release and these are my issues with it:

1. The December update completely killed my reception. Reception wasn't great when I first got the phone, but then the December update made it even worse, to the point where sometimes I don't get reception at all at work out at home, which I've never had an issue with before on previous phones. It's just completely inconsistent, one minute I'm on 5G, next on 4G, next on 0 reception and I can't make a phone call. Restarting the phone helps sometimes, sometimes not. Google seem to have found a fix for this but won't be releasing it until *late January*. This is insane as I know there are people who are needing the fix now. Making phonecalls is kind of important for a phone. This is my biggest issue with the phone and the biggest issue I've ever had with a smartphone.

2. Battery life. Google went on and on about Tensor being designed by Google (it wasn't) for efficiency, but it's not an efficient chip - regularly heating up when the phone isn't doing much at all, just simple web browsing, and I'm not sure if battery has gotten worse, but I get about 4 hours of screen time for me which isn't very good considering I was getting around 6-7 hours of screen time on my Galaxy S21 Ultra.

3. Camera. I have to say, after taking more and more pictures with the 6 Pro, I think the previous Pixel phones took better photos. The 6 Pro cranks HDR way too high so that you never get deep shadows and black in an image, it's a lot of grey hues whereas previous Pixel phones would let blacks be black. Also with the new sensor, taking photos of close up images now blurs anything that isn't directly centre of the shot. I find any shots that aren't in perfect lighting conditions, skin tones look muddy and I get chromatic abberations. The wide-angle lens to me is useless - it's a 107 degree FOV lens which takes pretty poor quality shots, whereas Samsung and Apple use a 120 degree FOV lenses so those cameras take much wider angle shots than the Pixel does. The only lens I actually like on the Pixel 6 Pro is the 4x telephoto zoom, but that's only when it decides to work. If the conditions aren't right, the phone won't activate the 4x lens and instead will digitally crop in the main lens 4x for a lower quality photo. Also consistency is an issue. I can take a photo that looks nice, but then the next photo will turn out really quite bad, and the front facing camera is awful when not in perfect lighting conditions. The video quality is better than previous Pixel phones, but the main camera imo is worse. I'd prefer the previous Pixel camera on the ancient IMX 363 sensor.

4. Android 12 is poorly designed and extremely buggy. It's a big new redesign for the OS but imo it's a huge step back from previous Android phones and has so many bugs.

- The quick settings having giant rectangles rather than smaller, neater icons.

- The wifi toggle brings up this menu where you have to press multiple buttons to turn wifi off rather than just previously tapping the quick tile.

- There's no vibration icon so I don't know if the phone is on vibrate mode unless I press the volume rocker. It can show a silent icon showing but won't show a vibrate icon for some reason.

- The theming engine is really quite bad. I put in a really dark/black background and the theme engine can't seem to find a dark colour palette to suit the wallpaper. It keeps wanting to do these bright pastel colours. Why?

5. Bugs and glitches appearing throughout the UI. Sometimes I'll swipe up to go to my home screen and my widgets have vanished and it takes a second for them to reload. Sometimes I swipe to the left to see the news feed and that's empty and takes a refresh for it to load up. Had situations where the screen hasn't been responsive for a few seconds, where the keyboard doesn't pop up when I'm in a text box.
issues with the keyboard lagging so when I tap two letters on other side's of the keyboard, it lags and thinks it's a swipe gesture and enters some random word I didn't enter. Had my headphones plugged in, I hear the notification chime, go to look at my phone and there's no notifcations. Just a lot of weird/random things.

I was really happy when I first got the phone but that honeymoon period ended, and the reception issues to me are really so bad and Google's slow response is so surprising that I'm considering just going back to the Galaxy with the S22 Ultra. Never thought a Galaxy phone would be more reliable and consistent with better cameras than the Pixel, but here we are.

 

[Blaize19]

I have the Tmo version. No connection issues at all. Battery life is not the best and it occasionally gets a bit warm, but that's not specific to carrier locked devices. My unit hasn't had any other bugs that I've noticed.

 

[Kizzy Catwoman]

I really love my 6 Pro. I've had a few bugs and had to restart the phone a few times and I had to re-enroll my right thumb after the last update. But now my fingerprint reader works 90% of the time and I love the screen. I love the size and I really love the phone. I have no regrets in buying it and my current experience with it has been positive enough for me to want to keep it. My battery life isn't too bad especially because I keep it on 4G. There is no 5G in my area so having that switched on would just drain the battery looking for a signal that would never be found. I got my update the date it was released so I haven't had problems with them either. The December one came through on the date it was released as well. I haven't had call screening turned off and I have had all my updates.

 

[Morty2264]

I really love my 6 Pro. I've had a few bugs and had to restart the phone a few times and I had to re-enroll my right thumb after the last update. But now my fingerprint reader works 90% of the time and I love the screen. I love the size and I really love the phone. I have no regrets in buying it and my current experience with it has been positive enough for me to want to keep it. My battery life isn't too bad especially because I keep it on 4G. There is no 5G in my area so having that switched on would just drain the battery looking for a signal that would never be found. I got my update the date it was released so I haven't had problems with them either. The December one came through on the date it was released as well. I haven't had call screening turned off and I have had all my updates.

That's awesome to hear! I find that even my Pixel 5 will glitch and a restart has to happen -- and that has the good ol' regular chip in it. Any phone and OS can glitch! And I'm sure with more updates, the Pixel 6 line will be even better!

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

That's awesome to hear! I find that even my Pixel 5 will glitch and a restart has to happen -- and that has the good ol' regular chip in it. Any phone and OS can glitch! And I'm sure with more updates, the Pixel 6 line will be even better!

Yeah I definitely think that with a few updates, the Pixel 6 phones will be great. The reception issues are frustrating, but once that has been cleared up I'll be able to use the phone again properly.

 

[scribe4food]

My P6P randomly restarts now. Awesome surprise, like finding a razor blade in a Halloween apple.

 

[sitnaing83]

My P6P has minimal issue even with Dec update.
I been seeing chatters about customer support with Google being not very great. It did not come to that stage yet.

I guess I am extremely patient for what I get with Google customisation capability after being a loyal fan of Apple walled garden.
I will miss Apple customer service but totally broke my mental jail from them is one of the benefit after using Pixel.
Google hardware and their habit of project continuity is not at best but that's what we should be living with right?
Pixels are not for general public or for layman use as I presume.

 

[Morty2264]

My P6P randomly restarts now. Awesome surprise, like finding a razor blade in a Halloween apple.

Whoah, what a simile you've used! I'm sorry this is happening to you! Have you installed any new apps recently? Does this happen in Safe Mode?

 

[scribe4food]

Whoah, what a simile you've used! I'm sorry this is happening to you! Have you installed any new apps recently? Does this happen in Safe Mode?

Yes I've used Safe Mode and I have not installed any new apps. I waited two weeks to add this information, unsure if this was a one off. However, it's not.

 

[mustang7757]

[No Mod action will be discussed in the Forum
Any questions should be talked through Pm with that Mod ]

 

[slave]

To answer OP's question; expectations are really high for Pixels. This isn't a phone from some two-bit company, it's from the company that makes Android and is one of the largest tech companies in the world. With Apple nailing the execution on their phones year on year, the expectation is that Google are able to deliver the same.

I've had the 6 Pro since release and these are my issues with it:

1. The December update completely killed my reception. Reception wasn't great when I first got the phone, but then the December update made it even worse, to the point where sometimes I don't get reception at all at work out at home, which I've never had an issue with before on previous phones. It's just completely inconsistent, one minute I'm on 5G, next on 4G, next on 0 reception and I can't make a phone call. Restarting the phone helps sometimes, sometimes not. Google seem to have found a fix for this but won't be releasing it until *late January*. This is insane as I know there are people who are needing the fix now. Making phonecalls is kind of important for a phone. This is my biggest issue with the phone and the biggest issue I've ever had with a smartphone.

2. Battery life. Google went on and on about Tensor being designed by Google (it wasn't) for efficiency, but it's not an efficient chip - regularly heating up when the phone isn't doing much at all, just simple web browsing, and I'm not sure if battery has gotten worse, but I get about 4 hours of screen time for me which isn't very good considering I was getting around 6-7 hours of screen time on my Galaxy S21 Ultra.

3. Camera. I have to say, after taking more and more pictures with the 6 Pro, I think the previous Pixel phones took better photos. The 6 Pro cranks HDR way too high so that you never get deep shadows and black in an image, it's a lot of grey hues whereas previous Pixel phones would let blacks be black. Also with the new sensor, taking photos of close up images now blurs anything that isn't directly centre of the shot. I find any shots that aren't in perfect lighting conditions, skin tones look muddy and I get chromatic abberations. The wide-angle lens to me is useless - it's a 107 degree FOV lens which takes pretty poor quality shots, whereas Samsung and Apple use a 120 degree FOV lenses so those cameras take much wider angle shots than the Pixel does. The only lens I actually like on the Pixel 6 Pro is the 4x telephoto zoom, but that's only when it decides to work. If the conditions aren't right, the phone won't activate the 4x lens and instead will digitally crop in the main lens 4x for a lower quality photo. Also consistency is an issue. I can take a photo that looks nice, but then the next photo will turn out really quite bad, and the front facing camera is awful when not in perfect lighting conditions. The video quality is better than previous Pixel phones, but the main camera imo is worse. I'd prefer the previous Pixel camera on the ancient IMX 363 sensor.

4. Android 12 is poorly designed and extremely buggy. It's a big new redesign for the OS but imo it's a huge step back from previous Android phones and has so many bugs.

- The quick settings having giant rectangles rather than smaller, neater icons.

- The wifi toggle brings up this menu where you have to press multiple buttons to turn wifi off rather than just previously tapping the quick tile.

- There's no vibration icon so I don't know if the phone is on vibrate mode unless I press the volume rocker. It can show a silent icon showing but won't show a vibrate icon for some reason.

- The theming engine is really quite bad. I put in a really dark/black background and the theme engine can't seem to find a dark colour palette to suit the wallpaper. It keeps wanting to do these bright pastel colours. Why?

5. Bugs and glitches appearing throughout the UI. Sometimes I'll swipe up to go to my home screen and my widgets have vanished and it takes a second for them to reload. Sometimes I swipe to the left to see the news feed and that's empty and takes a refresh for it to load up. Had situations where the screen hasn't been responsive for a few seconds, where the keyboard doesn't pop up when I'm in a text box.
issues with the keyboard lagging so when I tap two letters on other side's of the keyboard, it lags and thinks it's a swipe gesture and enters some random word I didn't enter. Had my headphones plugged in, I hear the notification chime, go to look at my phone and there's no notifcations. Just a lot of weird/random things.

I was really happy when I first got the phone but that honeymoon period ended, and the reception issues to me are really so bad and Google's slow response is so surprising that I'm considering just going back to the Galaxy with the S22 Ultra. Never thought a Galaxy phone would be more reliable and consistent with better cameras than the Pixel, but here we are.

Did you get the December update? If so, is it worse?

 

[TraderGary]

To answer OP's question; expectations are really high for Pixels. This isn't a phone from some two-bit company, it's from the company that makes Android and is one of the largest tech companies in the world. With Apple nailing the execution on their phones year on year, the expectation is that Google are able to deliver the same.

I've had the 6 Pro since release and these are my issues with it:

1. The December update completely killed my reception. Reception wasn't great when I first got the phone, but then the December update made it even worse, to the point where sometimes I don't get reception at all at work out at home, which I've never had an issue with before on previous phones. It's just completely inconsistent, one minute I'm on 5G, next on 4G, next on 0 reception and I can't make a phone call. Restarting the phone helps sometimes, sometimes not. Google seem to have found a fix for this but won't be releasing it until *late January*. This is insane as I know there are people who are needing the fix now. Making phonecalls is kind of important for a phone. This is my biggest issue with the phone and the biggest issue I've ever had with a smartphone.

2. Battery life. Google went on and on about Tensor being designed by Google (it wasn't) for efficiency, but it's not an efficient chip - regularly heating up when the phone isn't doing much at all, just simple web browsing, and I'm not sure if battery has gotten worse, but I get about 4 hours of screen time for me which isn't very good considering I was getting around 6-7 hours of screen time on my Galaxy S21 Ultra.

3. Camera. I have to say, after taking more and more pictures with the 6 Pro, I think the previous Pixel phones took better photos. The 6 Pro cranks HDR way too high so that you never get deep shadows and black in an image, it's a lot of grey hues whereas previous Pixel phones would let blacks be black. Also with the new sensor, taking photos of close up images now blurs anything that isn't directly centre of the shot. I find any shots that aren't in perfect lighting conditions, skin tones look muddy and I get chromatic abberations. The wide-angle lens to me is useless - it's a 107 degree FOV lens which takes pretty poor quality shots, whereas Samsung and Apple use a 120 degree FOV lenses so those cameras take much wider angle shots than the Pixel does. The only lens I actually like on the Pixel 6 Pro is the 4x telephoto zoom, but that's only when it decides to work. If the conditions aren't right, the phone won't activate the 4x lens and instead will digitally crop in the main lens 4x for a lower quality photo. Also consistency is an issue. I can take a photo that looks nice, but then the next photo will turn out really quite bad, and the front facing camera is awful when not in perfect lighting conditions. The video quality is better than previous Pixel phones, but the main camera imo is worse. I'd prefer the previous Pixel camera on the ancient IMX 363 sensor.

4. Android 12 is poorly designed and extremely buggy. It's a big new redesign for the OS but imo it's a huge step back from previous Android phones and has so many bugs.

- The quick settings having giant rectangles rather than smaller, neater icons.

- The wifi toggle brings up this menu where you have to press multiple buttons to turn wifi off rather than just previously tapping the quick tile.

- There's no vibration icon so I don't know if the phone is on vibrate mode unless I press the volume rocker. It can show a silent icon showing but won't show a vibrate icon for some reason.

- The theming engine is really quite bad. I put in a really dark/black background and the theme engine can't seem to find a dark colour palette to suit the wallpaper. It keeps wanting to do these bright pastel colours. Why?

5. Bugs and glitches appearing throughout the UI. Sometimes I'll swipe up to go to my home screen and my widgets have vanished and it takes a second for them to reload. Sometimes I swipe to the left to see the news feed and that's empty and takes a refresh for it to load up. Had situations where the screen hasn't been responsive for a few seconds, where the keyboard doesn't pop up when I'm in a text box.
issues with the keyboard lagging so when I tap two letters on other side's of the keyboard, it lags and thinks it's a swipe gesture and enters some random word I didn't enter. Had my headphones plugged in, I hear the notification chime, go to look at my phone and there's no notifcations. Just a lot of weird/random things.

I was really happy when I first got the phone but that honeymoon period ended, and the reception issues to me are really so bad and Google's slow response is so surprising that I'm considering just going back to the Galaxy with the S22 Ultra. Never thought a Galaxy phone would be more reliable and consistent with better cameras than the Pixel, but here we are.

There must be a dramatic difference in where one lives. You're apparently in Australia?

I'm near Atlanta, GA, USA, and I've had no problems since the day I unboxed my Pixel 6 Pro a month ago.

 

[brosko]

There must be a dramatic difference in where one lives. You're apparently in Australia?

I'm near Atlanta, GA, USA, and I've had no problems since the day I unboxed my Pixel 6 Pro a month ago.

I have to say mine's been pretty decent connection wise too. I didn't get the December update though. There are a lot of weird little bugs though. I'll admit that.

 

[maverick7526]

I have to say mine's been pretty decent connection wise too. I didn't get the December update though. There are a lot of weird little bugs though. I'll admit that.

Same thing with mine. I have not had any catastrophic connection issues. I'm still on the Nov update. I did have a weird call bug glitch where it would not let me call on wifi calling but that has resolved itself. I have had a bunch of UI bugs which aren't really deal breakers, but they diminish the quality/usability of the phone.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Did you get the December update? If so, is it worse?

Yeah December update made to worse for me. I just had to bite the bullet and rolled back to the November patch. Really can't wait until end of January for the next patch for reception to be fixed, especially with going back to work again this week. Can't have a phone where I can't reliably make/receive phone calls.

I'm really surprised that Google have taken so long to identify the issue and that they're going to take so long to release a fix. It's not some minor big, this is cellular reception.

 

[goji26]

Yeah December update made to worse for me. I just had to bite the bullet and rolled back to the November patch. Really can't wait until end of January for the next patch for reception to be fixed, especially with going back to work again this week. Can't have a phone where I can't reliably make/receive phone calls.

I'm really surprised that Google have taken so long to identify the issue and that they're going to take so long to release a fix. It's not some minor big, this is cellular reception.

Makes me think there's a hardware issue.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

Makes me think there's a hardware issue.

I don't believe it's a hardware issue. Rolling back to the November update, the reception is better (still not great though). If it were a hardware issue, then the reception would have been poor no matter what patch it was on. But there's a definite improvement going back to the November patch.

 

[mustang7757]

Yeah December update made to worse for me. I just had to bite the bullet and rolled back to the November patch. Really can't wait until end of January for the next patch for reception to be fixed, especially with going back to work again this week. Can't have a phone where I can't reliably make/receive phone calls.

I'm really surprised that Google have taken so long to identify the issue and that they're going to take so long to release a fix. It's not some minor big, this is cellular reception.

I think what happened was they had the cellular bug but like more and more bugs showing up and they needed more time to fix those as well as the original bug . I think if the bug was just cellular it would have been rolled out by now but there were way to many bugs besides that from reports i was reading.

 

[I Can Be Your Hero]

I think what happened was they had the cellular bug but like more and more bugs showing up and they needed more time to fix those as well as the original bug . I think if the bug was just cellular it would have been rolled out by now but there were way to many bugs besides that from reports i was reading.

Sounds reasonable, but the importance and severity of the reception issue should have been pushed out separately imo. Other bugs are annoying, sure, but not being able to make receive calls is serious.