It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google. I've seen lots of complaints from Nexus 6P owners who didn't being shoved off to Huawei and their terrible support. But I bought mine from Google, who twice offered me RMAs after the warranty period was over with no resistance. Most recently they replaced it with a new Pixel XL, instead (due to stock issues, I assume).
That being said, Google needs to improve their out-of-warranty repair/replacement options. I couldn't do anything for my Chromebook Pixel once the warranty ran out, and I wouldn't count on them to randomly add a de facto additional year to the warranty like they did with the 6P, which was probably done because of its terrible, widespread battery issues.
> It seems to make a big difference whether or not you buy it from Google.
I bought my 6p from Google. I paid for the extended warranty. It went into a boot loop after 13 months and they still wanted me to pay the $75 fee for a refurb phone. Remember: I paid $89 in advance for a 2 year extended warranty. This is for a well known issue in their hardware, that iirc they are being taken to court for.
I had purchased a new Android phone every year for many years at that point. I do Android development for a popular open source library/product.
They're banned now. No more Android phones in my house for a long time. Happy on the iPhone and know if I walk into an Apple store I'll actually receive support.
It sounds like they're pretty random with their support. In a way that's almost worse, if their support was fully broken then you could make your choice to buy or not based on that, but when it's 50/50 then you have to take a gamble.
My understanding is that even with the two year $99 Applecare+ for your phone, you have to pay them an additional $79 if your iPhone needs replacement.
Had a bad experience with google support as well. My 6p was bought from google store, had boot loop issue just about 2 weeks out of warranty, google support did not want to take responsibility, and huawei was kind enough to RMA the device for free. Google only started to offer RMAs when the issue was being spread by media. And they recently denied me again of the phone dieing with battery below 40%, said because the phone was repaired by huawei before. Sounds absurd to me, I basically purchased the phone from google store without any support.
And those were multiple tries with different support associates. I will stay away from google hardware products until there are substantial improvements.
I bought directly and was passed around by Google and Huawei support for months (and multiple calls; hours of my time wasted - why can't anyone just do support by email anymore?) before ultimately giving up on getting the constant battery issues addressed. Initial contact was precisely 3 weeks outside of the warranty period for the now well-documented phone shuts off when battery reaches [15|30|50]%.
I feel like I purchased a year's worth of problem-free phone experience for nearly $CAD900. To me, that's not great value.
Well, when you can. Pixel stuff wasn’t available in France for some reason, and Pixel 2 seemingly isn’t going to be either. That’s another area Samsung and Apple have nailed that Google is yet to crack on the hardware (and sometimes services) side: presence.
P.S: my Nexus 5 support story was stellar. With the Pixel promising but unavailable as a replacement I went for an iPhone 6S (not a 7 because I just invested in quality, jack’d audio hardware)
I bought from Google and they replaced mine on warranty after I (truthfully) described it as having been "run over by a car." I expected them to say no, but was very thankful that they helped me.
They did tell me that this was a one-time deal though.
My experience (multiple times) with Google's hardware support has really been nice. Every time they have helped me immediately, sometimes replacing the devices without asking questions or proofs etc.
It's also worth noting that Nexus line was more of a budget phone, whereas Pixel is a premium flagship. The extra cost is exactly for things such as better costumers support.
I don't understand people comparing a 350$ Nexus 5 phone to a 700$ Pixel phone, and saying that they're both by Google, and anything that applies to the first also must apply to the second. It's also like people blindly hating on support for paid products by bringing anecdotal evidence from support on free products. That's just not how things work.
The Nexus line was barely a Google product, it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight. That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google.
600$, compared to 800$ for a comparable Pixel phone. That 200$ difference is the premium you pay for good support. The Pixel doesn't really have anything else that the 6P didn't have.
Certainly so. They didn't really stand behind it, like they should have.
> it was just meant to be a vanilla open device for developers, with some Google oversight."
That counters the reality that these things were sold on the mass market to normal people without developer accounts and the accompanying "You'll shoot your eye out, dev" EULA.
It was advertised on TV, for !@!#$@ sake.
> That's very different from a premium device built and supported from start to finish by Google*
There aren't many devices out there, aside from the iPhone, that are supported from start and finish by one company.
Google clearly did not intend 6P to be either budget or 'developer' phone. They were very serious about the phone and spent a lot of money on advertising it to consumers in a number of countries.
That being said, Google needs to improve their out-of-warranty repair/replacement options. I couldn't do anything for my Chromebook Pixel once the warranty ran out, and I wouldn't count on them to randomly add a de facto additional year to the warranty like they did with the 6P, which was probably done because of its terrible, widespread battery issues.