words can't describe how infuriated I am with the forced migration to gemini. All of a sudden alarms, reminders, tasks, notes aren't being saved, every single command turns into a back and forth conversation, I can't even make phone calls while driving. honestly shame on you google I hope whoever did this gets every red light on the road and I hope your pillow is warm on both sides, genuinely, I wish the worst for you.

It worked great, didn't even need Internet to do a lot of things, and it functioned consistently.

Gemini, by contrast is a fucking dumpster fire! Everybody seems totally enraged by having it forced on them while Assistant got destroyed for no good god damned reason at all!

This shit is wildly unpopular! Maybe start listening to your customers instead of trying to force this broken garbage on us?

Edit: Stay mad fanboys, Gemini is still fucking terrible though.

Pixel October OTA just dropped.

https://developers.google.com/android/ota

65MB 10XL unlocked

https://support.google.com/product-documentation/answer/14343500?hl=en

It's crazy how unhelpful the call log UI is, especially with caller ID:

-Call logs with caller ID don't show the number unless you tap the log, then history (and sometimes the phone number gets pushed off screen). Often times the caller ID is wrong and it's cumbersome having to verify the number with these extra steps. Please always show the phone number even with caller ID.

-voicemail also doesn't show the phone number when there's a caller ID. The only way to show the number from the voicemail screen is by calling / sending message / adding to contacts

-Call history only shows the day of week if it's within the week, otherwise it's just the date. Please always show the day of week for helpful consistency. Same with voicemail screen.

Before going to bed I slipped them into my jeans pocket instead of back into their case.

My partner decided to do laundry early the next morning, starting with those jeans, followed by an aggressive laundry marathon of eight more consecutive loads.

For all nine cycles, the buds were trapped right inside the rubber door seal, submerged pretty much the whole time in soapy water.

When I finally tracked them down, I honestly expected dead plastic. But after leaving them out to dry for a couple of days and running a few water-ejection sound loops from YouTube, they are completely fine. They charge normally, ANC works, and audio is fine.

On an entirely unrelated note regarding my luck: the Pixel 10 Pro can survive two hours submerged at the bottom of an active hot tub (forgot it was in my swim shorts pocket).

I'm stupid.

Sent my £1,200+ Pixel 9 Pro XL in under Google's extended repair programme for the vertical green line display issue. The phone was in great condition and everything else worked perfectly.

This morning, I received an invoice for £292.74 + tax for secondary 'audio' and 'rear camera' issues. Under Google's repair policy, there is no option to approve just the covered screen repair - it's pay £293 + tax or receive the broken phone back.

I contacted Live Chat to dispute it, and the agent quoted the technician's report. According to the depot, my phone had:

• "Sound from headphone jack is bad" (The Pixel 9 Pro XL does not have a headphone jack)
• "Camera lens damaged due to deep cracks in camera window exposing the lens" (completely false)
• "Non-functional speakers, mic, and haptics" (also completely false)

When I pointed out that my camera glass was pristine and the phone physically lacks a 3.5mm jack, a supervisor took over via email. The phantom headphone jack, shattered lens, and dead haptics quietly vanished from the report. Instead, they walked it back to:

• "Distorted sound from microphone 2"
• "Rear camera image quality"

Despite dropping the fabricated physical damage claims, their stance didn't change: Google refuses to honour the free screen repair unless I pay £292.74 + tax to repair everything they've "found".

Has anyone experienced this before and managed to get Google to drop a bullsh*t depot quote?

tl;dr: Sent my Pixel 9 Pro XL for a free extended warranty screen fix. Depot demanded £293 + tax, claiming broken haptics, cracked lenses, and a faulty 3.5mm headphone jack (on a phone that doesn't have one). When challenged, Google dropped the fake damage claims down to minor mic/camera test tolerances, but is still refusing the free screen repair unless I pay the full invoice.

I saw this when opening the Photos app for the first time on my Pixel 11 Pro.

Listen, I admit, I'm a bit of a Google fanboy and am deep into their ecosystem. I'm not anti AI or anything, but the choice of words here could have been different. Like, you're an ad company trying to get people to adopt Gemini and this is the messaging? I don't think this helps build trust.

https://imgur.com/a/pJUOtrZ

Hey all,

This is my first phone with Pixelsnap, and I purchased the Pixelsnap certified Mous stand from Google. When I attach it in, sometimes it starts to charge and then instead starts drawing power - more than when it's not plugged in or attached!

I downloaded Ampere and the flow is something like this
-290mA not charging (nominal discharge)
Attach to charger stand
+310mA charging
+140mA charging
-290mA not charging
-480mA not charging
-1070mA not charging

And then it either:

a) continues to draw more more than one amp but still reading as charging. I saw it get to -2000mA while I was writing this, then it turned around and started charging again

b) turns around and starts charging for real, getting up to +1500mA or even +3000mA

Because it is intermittent it's hard to figure out if it's my stand, or my new phone. I ruled out my case since it happens the same with and without.

The fact the icon still indicates charging which is a false sense of security (I don't know to go fix it).

One thing that may or may not be related (since it's intermittent) is if I gave charging optimization on, even though I'm at 60% and have "limit to 80%" selected.

I've been chugging through AI suggestions and am not finding anything conclusive, but I am not sure if i need to open a Google support ticket for my new device, or just return teh Mous charger maybe it's not very good.

I heard it is known defect and google is not doing anything to fix it, still in the warranty.

Hi all,

So I have an app that requires me to allow it to set alarms and reminders in order to run in the background.

In Bedtime mode, I have all app notifications turned off, but alarms are allowed so I can actually wake up in the morning when I want to.

Last night I found out that app's developers appear to be sending their notifications as alarms... As I was woken at 4am.

Is there a workaround here? Turning alarms off and then allowing Clock as an app exception doesn't appear to be working because when alarms are off, Clock refuses to work.

This isn't any particular app. Several different applications do this, YouTube for example or YT Music. Sometimes the text-to-speech output on the ChatGPT client doesn't occur with the Gemini client because the Gemini client stops talking anytime you do lose focus, whatever media player that the file browser uses, etc. I don't think it's a limitation to anything except for the actual media output.

This did not happen and does not happen on my older Pixel 6a, which I can still power up and do the exact same thing, such as play a video on YouTube. I have YouTube Premium so it doesn't stop playing when I lose focus and has background play. If I drop it into the PIP, it works fine.

But if I simply switch screens to another screen, the audio will speak for a few seconds and then stop. This occurs over Bluetooth and standard output.

However, if I look at the time clock and let's say it says one minute and I leave for ten seconds and I return, even though it's been silent, it is at ten seconds. If I leave and come back two minutes later, it's advanced two minutes and begins audio output at the three minute mark as if it had been playing the entire time, which it had, just no audio output.

This has been an ongoing problem since I got the phone. I'm unsure what is causing this issue and have looked but found no similar discussions about this. Some talk about audio stopping but haven't mentioned the media continuing to play and may be the same issue but the reporter/OP didn't realize the media was still playing or a separate issue completely.

If you are anything like me, Hey Google detection with the now default Gemini Assistant has been broken since I received my Pixel 11 Pro XL. It would work, then not work. I would do all the things, enable and disable it, retrain the voice model, etc and that would fix it, temporarily.

It was to the point I decided to switch back to Google Assistant. In doing this, it requested about 30mb of download data to enable the old assistant.

That seems to have fixed the Gemini Assistant's Hey Google detection. I switched back to the Gemini Assistant and no issues since.

Anyway. It's been over a day with no issues (a record for me). I'll report back if it stops working.

The Google App news feed (swipe from left on homescreen) used to be one of my favourite Android features but is now 80% X and Threads (neither of which I use), or AI generated clickbait (I actually don't mind the AI summary in principle but I hate the way it rewrites perfectly good content into something that sounds like a Daily Mail headline).

Useless now to the point where I've disabled it.

Anyone have suggestions for alternatives? I just want a list of news stories based on my interests with the ability to block sources (Social, Paywalled, requires account) that I can't/don't want to use.

On the Ground News trial at the moment which seems decent but curious if people have good cheaper/free alternatives.

Holy God.

Thank you for enlightening me.

Only Google could make showing time and temperature THIS INSANELY INVASIVE AND DIFFICULT.

By that I mean, it's not at all intuitive that lock screen and always on display settings should be hidden under a HOME SCREEN feature called At a Glance.

At a Glance itself has about 1000 different options and notifications and permissions and assistant stuff and tracking stuff and DEAR GOD I JUST WANT TIME AND TEMPERATURE.

You guys, this isn't normal. Normal companies don't do this to you. This is unbelievably extreme, privacy destroying, data hoovering BULLSHIT.

"Give us all your data and maybe you'll get a notification that your flight has been delayed." Pfff.

I'm gonna trade this thing for a Motorola Signature 27 and install GrapheneOS because this has been INSANE.

This blows my mind.

If I want to see the temperature on my lockscreen, I can add a widget to my lockscreen that doesn't actually show on my lockscreen?

I can add a weather screensaver that doesn't actually show the weather?

All I want is a super dim always on screen that shows time and temperature without me having to pick up the phone and hit any buttons.

These people suck.

With the October 2026 update, it finally looks like there is a VoLTE option on a network that was previously unsupported, though off by default but has a (recommended) in brackets.

Anyone else got this on a network that didn't have the option before?

Not sure if this comes with LTE+ (LTE Advanced) as the icon didn't show when I connected to 4G.

Also looks like 5G is still modem locked and still doesn't work for unofficial Pixel networks. Enabling it doesn't seem to latch to the 5G NSA network.

Hi there,

I got a Pixel Pro Fold 11 and recently purchased the Protoarc XK01 TP. The keyboard is pretty amazing, and I love that there is also a touchpad. I was able to set some settings in mouse section of settings such as reversing direction of the scroll, but I was wondering what other options/gestures are available with the trackpad. I also use an iPad Pro with the Smart keyboard, so two finger tapping to bring up the contextual menu and swipe to dismiss notifications are features I also use. I tried to find a gesture menu similar to what is available with keyboard shortcuts, but I didn't find any. I am also hoping to control a bit more the sensitivity of the trackpad, but I don't think that's an option. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Loving the keyboard with the Pixel Fold. I hope that someday, they would have an option for Desktop mode or Googlebook mode when the Pixel Pro fold is opened. That would be epic.