So while chatting with the dude from Rogers about their mobile data plan and how it seemed to be the only plan that would meet my needs (just data for a smartphone) he suggested the Nexus 6P.
At first I was like but my Nexus 5 just died from bootlooping and that problem affects the Nexus 6P. Why would I want to risk buying a crazy expensive phone that will most likely end up a paperweight. An easy counterpoint is that they are all such a risk so unless there's some type of product replacement plan, all phones can become a paperweight.
Unphased because I don't really care I ordered a SIM from Rogers and signed up for a shitty data only plan. Shitty in that it offers 500mbs of data for 15$. IF (when) I exceed that it goes to 3GB of LTE data for 45$. Not a great deal because I was used to 2GB and whatever else on public WiFi (mostly work wifi, home wifi and Tim Horton's wifi.
I don't plan to use more than 500mb though if I can help it until I start working full time again. So 15$ a month is pretty much unbeatable. Especially when I can still make calls to US and Canada from the phone, do the messaging thing, and the transcribed messages thing.. for free with Google Voice.
So the phone. I ordered it from Amazon but stupidly had it sent to Champlain NY (freeportforwarding). After submitting the order I noticed the mistake and tried to change the address to Montreal. But couldn't. SHIT.
Wtv. Champlain is only an hour away anyway and I have a passport so no big deal. Whatever money I would have saved buying the phone from another seller comes out the same with duties and taxes at the border.
The road trip to collect it was nice at least.. no issues at the border other than explaining having a car and buying a phone while unemployed to the border agent. "I need them to get a job".
Since the phone only took a couple of days to arrive I didn't have much time to run around looking for paraphernalia for it. I mean how bad would it be to find cables, charges and a case?
Actually..
I had 3 stops in mind besides waiting another week for anything to ship in from Amazon.
1. Addison Electronics.
2. Access Electronics.
3. Electroniquedirect.com
Addison is usually a one stop shop for anything made in china that plugs into a battery or a wall socket and other toys. Great place to shop for a nerd like me but thankfully I'm on a budget and they didn't even have half the things I needed for the phone.
Ended up picking up a shitty solar battery charger and a couple of other things. They didn't have USB-C cables or adapters, shockingly, and no cases either. Felt bad for driving all the way over there for nothing.
The electronics liquidation place was closed that day. They are only open Thursday Friday and Saturday to the public. Rats.
Access was also closed by the time we got there but I'm sure they would have had a couple of the other things on the list.
So I ended up going to BestBuy.
Turns out the prices aren't so bad.. but the few things that I did find did still tally up to a lot more than what I wanted to spend.
I found this adapter which lets me do something interesting. I can turn off cellular data, wifi, and connect to LAN. At first I was like OK but how do I assign this phone an IP on my LAN. Turns out it does it by itself. That's fine I suppose. But it doesn't actually do anything special. You can't get faster speeds because the phone itself is slow internally no matter what network you're on.
Plus because it doesn't come with an AC adapter I can't even charge the phone while it is plugged into this mess. And it doesn't feature wireless charging. Like.. Ffff what's all the money for?! The screen is nice and all but how is this thing worth 799 or more new?! Bleh
So I'm wondering.. What would be worth $1000 in a phone anyway?
The phone itself is larger than the Nexus 5. Even so it operates one-handed very well. Like it seems weighted to stay in one hand reasonably well.
The screen is also insane. It does come off really dark but the Super AMOLED display is stupid crazy with the black levels. Like there's black plastic at the top and bottom of the screen. You can't tell where the plastic ends and the screen starts when the screen is on and showing a black background even with the lights off. I mean there's no discernible edge.
But then after that I mean what's the money buying? It feels like phones are only so 'smart' because of the services they connect to and they are still limited but the shitty internals of the phone.
I would expect more physical ports on phones. At least 2 USB-C because you can't take for granted that a user will have a dock, or hub, but they will have a charger and something else they can plug into the phone. Am I supposed to have a bluetooth VR headset with the phone or does it block the USB-C port if one is supported later on?
I mean I don't expect the phone to even be able to power a good VR headset or anything but eventually one of these phones will have to have a really great one to make it a common thing for everyone to want to have one.
And not having physical Ethernet due to the ubiquity of WiFi is really annoying. You'd kind of expect that phones should have 802.11 ac radios and would be able to work with gigabit speeds.. nope. Not even remotely close. But it is just a phone so no big deal.
Ok but only 32GB of onboard storage? for $700-$1000 phone? Why isn't there a 500GB SSD in there? or any phone? I honestly could sacrifice some battery life if there was a proper chunky SSD in there. Like really not having a meaningful amount of onboard storage really bugs me about this phone.
So being able to plug something else into the hub does solve the storage issue it doesn't make that extra storage portable.
What does is connecting to a cloud service like Google Drive, OneDrive, Biadu's cloud etc. They are all great except that they chew up data. If it had onboard ethernet and that was more common versus shitty wifi.. hmmm..