Google Pixel – From behind the lens

After a couple of months of hiatus from this site, I’m making the most of the our ANZAC day holiday at home as it is a very wet and rainy day outside, to give an update here.

I’ve been keeping an eye out in the past few months for a Google Pixel, since the Xiaomi Redmi Note 3 Pro was really a “stop-gap” phone that I purchased last year then the power button on my Nexus 5 started going on the fritz.

During a recent eBay AU sale on which certain stores had 20% off, the “new” or rather rebranded Dick Smith (really Kogan) sold the 32GB Pixel for $981.99, but with the 20% discount came down to $785.60. Unfortunately there was no choice of colour (only white), only 32GB, and only the Pixel model, not the Pixel XL.

After checking to make sure it had coverage of LTE Band 28 (important for Telstra and Optus 4G+ coverage in Australia, as it is lower frequency with better signal penetration through buildings etc), I took the plunge and made an order of the phone.

The phone was sent with tracking and arrived safely within a week.

I originally wondered how the phone could be sold so cheaply since the Australian retailers like JB Hifi sold the phones for over $1000 locally. This was soon answered as after receiving the phone, I wanted to flash the stock ROM downloaded from the Google website, but ran into trouble as the boot loader was locked.

After checking a few websites about locked Pixel boot loaders, I found out that Verizon made Pixel phones had their boot loaders locked (with no official way of unlocking them). This caused me to check the model number of the phone (as there is a US model for Verizon and then a model for “rest of the world”) – sure enough mine was a Verizon model – G-2PW4100.

Other than the locked boot loader there is no other real difference in the phone except for one or two network bands which are missing:
* UMTS/WCDMA: Bands 6, 9 and 19
* DS-CDMA: Bands 34 and 39
* FDD LTE: Bands 18, 19, 26 and 32
* TDD LTE: B 38, 39 and 40
I don’t get full network capability from my carrier, as iiNet (Optus) support 5 bands on the LTE spectrum, but the phone only supports 4 out of the 5 bands – if you ever want to check your phone’s compatibility, head over to http://willmyphonework.net/

The next challenge came when I took the sim card out of my Xiaomi and realised that it was a micro-sim instead of a nano sim! I had to ring iiNet and order a new nano sim, which unfortunately cost me an extra $10 for the issuance of a new sim card.

I of course couldn’t wait the up-to 4 business days for the sim to be sent out, so I took the chance and found a friend with a sim card puncher, and fortunately successfully punched out a nano sim, even though some of the contacts were trimmed. After inserting the trimmed sim, the phone powered up and connected to the network successfully.

I can say that the Pixel is a wonderful upgrade from the Xiaomi, although the screen is smaller, and my fat fingers are missing the larger 5.5″ screen of the Xiaomi compare to the 5″ of the Pixel.