Google Pixel XL Phones Blacklisted as Stolen

This whole situation stinks. I love my Pixel, but probably would have thought twice about buying one had all this been known at launch. Not that my carrier purchased Pixel would have been effected, but just the lack of support and transparency from Google might have had me looking elsewhere for a phone.

Still love my Pixel. Best damn phone on the market right now, AFAIAC.
 
I recall vaguely that Pixel's problem at launch was not being able to re-sell and having the customer tied to the phone. To me the poor daydream vr quality which was a major selling point to me and battery life make it a bummer.
 
I'm amazed that it's sorta fixed and that it happened right before a holiday weekend. Must be the power of the [H]ard.;)
 
Must admit, this whole thing is such a joke.

It took a whole week for them to get this issue partially resolved, mainly because it happened to you, the owner of a very well known site. I can only imagine how many poor souls lost their money just because they are "nobodies".

Horrible execution on Googles part.
 
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I too can confirm that my Pixel has been removed from the blacklist. NOTE: Please contact Google Project Fi as they were the ones who fixed this problem for me.
 

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Google has a long way to go. They should have come on the forum to help fix things.
I want my play account unlocked.
 
What a mess. My Note 5 is coming up on 2 years and the recent issues with high end phones (This pixel situation, Note 7 recall, S8 fragility) has me not looking forward to upgrading for the first time - ever.
 
oROEchimaru said:
I recall vaguely that Pixel's problem at launch was not being able to re-sell and having the customer tied to the phone. To me the poor daydream vr quality which was a major selling point to me and battery life make it a bummer.
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I have a Pixel XL and the battery life is probably one of the best i have ever used for Android, even the Galaxy S5 I had brand new can't complete with the battery life I get on my Pixel XL. Wonder if you got a shoddy battery in yours? Mine gives me 12 + plus hours of heavy use ( not games but texting, reading emails and news on the phone, and surfing various social media platforms.) That's after 7 months of use.
 
grtitan said:
Must admit, this whole thing is such a joke.

It took a whole week for them to get this issue partially resolved, mainly because it happened to you, the owner of a very well known site. I can only imaging how many poor souls that lost their money just because they are "nobodies".

Horrible execution on Googles part.
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A whole week? More like 3 days and I doubt Kyle's name had anything to do with it. I been with Fi for over a year and the one time I had a issue they solved it in minutes. Also their support is manned by Americans and not off loaded to shitty call center in India. Yea they screwed up but they fixed it relatively quick. If this happened at any of the major players they would of told you tough shit and buy a new phone.
 
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maxius said:
so your selling a pixel xl i assume?
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Yep. Make me an offer.

vegeta535 said:
A whole week? More like 3 days and I doubt Kyle's name had anything to do with it. I been with Fi for over a year and the one time I had a issue they solved it in minutes. Also their support is manned by Americans and not off loaded to shitty call center in India. Yea they screwed up but they fixed it relatively quick. If this happened at any of the major players they would of told you tough shit and buy a new phone.
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Keep in mind they started blacklisting phones on Monday, so four business days before we saw any movement and they were surely aware of what was going on.

So while I appreciate your experience, my experience with Google support has been much different as it is outlined here over the week. Lies? Contradictions? Non communication? Aboutface? Bad facts? Not exactly the hallmark of great support. If I am in Taiwan this weekend with my phone, is it going to work there? Dunno? Europe? Dunno. Middle East? Dunno.

That is not "misplaced hate." Those are the facts.
 
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You should just return the new one and keep the older one. Why give google your money for such a clusterf***?

Especially since pixel2 is probably only 2-3 months away.
 
That's crazy - hopefully Google will be clear as to what happened. There's plenty of ways to explain the issue without really explaining anything :p
 
Logan321 said:
You should just return the new one and keep the older one. Why give google your money for such a clusterf***?

Especially since pixel2 is probably only 2-3 months away.
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grtitan said:
I actually agree with you, I would do the same.
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Not sure why I had not considered that. It is sitting on my desk still in the shipping box. It looks like the return process is pretty easy. Good idea, it is going back. Not sure I will ever buy another Google phone after seeing how they treat their phone owners.
 
grtitan said:
On a serious note, I have being debating the same thing after my N6 was dropped like a bad habit by them.
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Meh, the Nexus 6 was launched in November 2014, and was thus comfortably beyond it's 2 year lifespan when they stopped including it in updates starting with 7.1.2.

Phones are 2 year devices. It should have been expected.

The published end of new feature support in was October 2016, as published on their support page. In fact, they extended it beyond October by two months, because Nexus 6 owners got 7.1.1 which launched in December, so they went above and beyond their commitments.

The Nexus 6 will continue to receive security updates per Good support until October 2017.

Quite frankly, I don't see what you are complaining about. They did exactly what they were supposed to.

They published they're support life cycle to the device, and then even extended support beyond the end date, and it still has security updates for 5+ more months.

My pixel has official new Android version support until October 2018 and guaranteed security updates until October 2019. When those dates arrive, I don't expect them to give me any further updates.

What were you expecting them to do?
 
SomeoneElse said:
I have a Pixel XL and the battery life is probably one of the best i have ever used for Android, even the Galaxy S5 I had brand new can't complete with the battery life I get on my Pixel XL. Wonder if you got a shoddy battery in yours? Mine gives me 12 + plus hours of heavy use ( not games but texting, reading emails and news on the phone, and surfing various social media platforms.) That's after 7 months of use.
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mine is just weird... i can game on it a few hours 4-5. i can read the news on it a few hours all on wifi.

take it hunting and it is a disaster... battery life is < 4 hours always.

i can use it for 10 min from 6am-6pm. at 2pm it could have 95% battery. at 6pm it could have 60 % battery.

i think pixel has bugs that when it loses wifi it still goes nuts trying to use wifi services or background services that are disabled. i have near everything disabled
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
What were you expecting them to do?
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To be dropped at 8.0 instead of 7.1.1.

Frankly, there are no technical reasons for them to drop those two devices at a point release.

But I get it, is their product and they do as they see fit.

I am not imposing anything on anybody, just expressing how I feel about the situation and what I think might be a better purchase in my future.

Perhaps it helps others, perhaps not, but I find weird how people seems to go out of their way to defend corporations practices.

My pocket comes before theirs, hence why I'm debating and evaluating my options.
 
grtitan said:
To be dropped at 8.0 instead of 7.1.1.

Frankly, there are no technical reasons for them to drop those two devices at a point release.

But I get it, is their product and they do as they see fit.

I am not imposing anything on anybody, just expressing how I feel about the situation and what I think might be a better purchase in my future.

Perhaps it helps others, perhaps not, but I find weird how people seems to go out of their way to defend corporations practices.

My pocket comes before theirs, hence why I'm debating and evaluating my options.
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It's not defending their practices. It's the way all of this works.

When you bought the device it had a published end of new feature support date. You decided to buy the device with that published end of support date, and then you get pissed when they end support on that date? Makes little sense to me.

And yes, there are technical reasons to end support for phones.

Phone operating systems are not windows. The component manufacturers the phone manufacturers buy parts from have closed source drivers and usually don't update them much after launch, so as time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain support for older phone hardware, unlike with Windows where the OS is mostly hardware agnostic, and driver's tend to be plentiful.

I would love to see phone OS releases become more like PC os releases, but unfortunately that's just not how it is.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's not defending their practices. It's the way all of this works.

When you bought the device it had a published end of new feature support date. You decided to buy the device with that published end of support date, and then you get pissed when they end support on that date? Makes little sense to me.

And yes, there are technical reasons to end support for phones.

Phone operating systems are not windows. The component manufacturers the phone manufacturers buy parts from have closed source drivers and usually don't update them much after launch, so as time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain support for older phone hardware, unlike with Windows where the OS is mostly hardware agnostic, and driver's tend to be plentiful.

I would love to see phone OS releases become more like PC os releases, but unfortunately that's just not how it is.
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I get all that, sadly, you are not getting the fact that in this particular case, they don't have a technical reason to drop this phone, there is nothing huge between versions 7.1.1 and 7.1.2.

Hell, it is a point point release.

They just decided to drop it right there and there.

Again, just stating my point of view, same as you did.

I don't have disposable income to buy devices that cost almost one thousand dollars to replace it every two years, when other, similar devices that cost the same, last up to 5 years.

Glad that you can do that.

It's very simple, my pocket before theirs.

If they don't provide what I want, then I take money to someone that can.

And by Kyle's comment, he is not entirely happy with them either, for other reasons, of course, but the end result is the same, he might take his money somewhere else.
 
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My pixel is showing online that it is no longer blacklisted yet my sim card cannot connect to any network still.

Is this happening to anyone else who's phone got unlisted?
 
I am sure there nobody at google making any kind of decision.
Its probably the same machine learning as in the 'GO' computer that created this shit, some kind of algorithm gone stupid.
'Cause you know AI is here and all that jazz.
 
Brad19 said:
My pixel is showing online that it is no longer blacklisted yet my sim card cannot connect to any network still.

Is this happening to anyone else who's phone got unlisted?
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Mine is working fine again. Did you use the check at Swappa? It seems to be the most up to date.

https://swappa.com/esn
 
Thank you for keeping us in the loop Kyle. While I do not have a Pixel XL, I'm sure other were just as frustrated as you. I'm curious if this will evolve into a law suit since people's phone were suddenly not able to make call, especially in emergency situations. Or was that always an option no matter if it were flagged as stolen or lost.
 
midnightfrolic said:
Thank you for keeping us in the loop Kyle. While I do not have a Pixel XL, I'm sure other were just as frustrated as you. I'm curious if this will evolve into a law suit since people's phone were suddenly not able to make call, especially in emergency situations. Or was that always an option no matter if it were flagged as stolen or lost.
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Any phone can make an emergency call, that's required by law. No sim card or locked, doesn't matter.
 
Brad19 said:
Hey Kyle, I did check there and it says that it is fine. I just received an email follow up from the support people and they said it should be fine but still isn't. Don't know why mine is not working still.
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Have you tried rebooting the phone? Just a thought.
 
Yeah done all that. Updated everything, power cycled it many time sand still nothing :(
 
I would say this about Google devices: I don't really care all that much that because they're Google co-designed and branded and that they come with "pure stock Android" all that much, what I would care about with those devices is the fact that they have relatively large communities of support around them and in that respect it's not like you won't be able to get the very latest version of Android installed on them even well outside of Google's lifespan for whatever the device happens to be. That's the big benefit for someone like myself but I am far from what one might consider a typical smartphone owner because I'm into using root/recovery/custom ROMs/etc for so long (decades now it seems).

I was chatting with a guy with a Nexus 6 just yesterday over at XDA and he was whining about that very issue: the fact that Google has now dropped his device from "official" support with 7.1.2 and he was wondering the same thing about why they did it with a point release which is at most trivial to any degree and not just keep providing said point releases till 8.0 hits the download repository for the AOSP branch sometime later this year. I asked him if he installed any custom ROMs or did anything other that pure stock Android on the device and he was flabbergasted at the suggestion - for me personally the issue was the fact that he's a member of XDA-Developers, the single largest source of smartphone customization materials on the entire freakin' Internet (not that he's a developer, that's not a requirement of course) and he was acting like my questioning of him in that respect was an insult or something. As if owning a Nexus device had some disclaimer at the time of purchase saying "You can't run anything but whatever Google tells you to run on this device or else..." or words to that effect, it was hilarious.

I commented that he could be running 7.1.2 in a matter of minutes after backing up his data and installing an AOSP-based ROM, either a heavily customized one or one that had practically nothing added to the bare AOSP branch compiled code for the Nexus 6 that's out there available right now. When Android 8.0 rolls out later this year guess what, that Nexus 6 will have people cranking out 8.0-based ROMs for it, no problems at all, and probably well into the Android 9.0 life cycle too, long past what Google considers to be "acceptable" in terms of the lifespan.

I swear I didn't see his face but I'm absolutely positive that when he read my reply he either a) spit out whatever he was drinking or consuming in utter disgust at my suggestion or b) screamed out loud cursing me to a damnation even I shudder to think about. :)

Anyway, it seems like the overwhelming majority of Nexus and Pixel device owners never seem to grasp the simple wonderful fact that Google, in its benevolence on the matter (yeah, I know, laughable right?), doesn't limit those devices in basically any manner with respect to the Android running on it aka you're free to install whatever you want on it with no really ill effects. No, it doesn't require a degree in rocket science to do it, usually takes nothing more than adjusting a few settings on the device (enable ADB, etc), plugging it into a computer (running Windows preferably), downloading whatever custom ROM you're wanting to play around with (there are literally hundreds of ROMs out for Nexus devices of all kinds and dozens upon dozens for Pixel devices), Google Apps (of various shapes and packages), backing up your data (remarkably Google offers that capability as part of Android and using "the cloud" if you keep it enabled which is the default), then opening a Command Prompt and typing a few commands, like 25 minutes tops and it's a new device in almost every software-based respect that matters.

I get why so many folks aren't interested in this aspect, I'm simply pointing out that as a Nexus or Pixel device owner it's an option there for the taking that comes as a bonus of sorts with the price you paid for having a pure Android device from Google itself or at least partially as they co-design them with the hardware OEMs they choose.

Guess this is somewhat off-topic but it kinda popped into the consciousness when I saw all the Nexus 6 talk. :) Google does pretty well at avoiding "planned obsolescence" unlike Apple does but even so there is a point where a manufacturer just isn't going to continue putting support into a device, sadly smartphones and other digital devices in today's world are (even more) rapidly becoming complete items of disposable tech to make landfills even taller I suppose.

At least with a lot of Android devices that allow for customization of various levels, you have the options available unlike with "that other big smartphone maker" that wants to keep all their products smelling fruity fresh and at the first hint of aging they toss 'em out. Rotten way of doing things all the way to the core, right? :D
 
Tiberian said:
I would say this about Google devices: I don't really care all that much that because they're Google co-designed and branded and that they come with "pure stock Android" all that much, what I would care about with those devices is the fact that they have relatively large communities of support around them and in that respect it's not like you won't be able to get the very latest version of Android installed on them even well outside of Google's lifespan for whatever the device happens to be. That's the big benefit for someone like myself but I am far from what one might consider a typical smartphone owner because I'm into using root/recovery/custom ROMs/etc for so long (decades now it seems).

I was chatting with a guy with a Nexus 6 just yesterday over at XDA and he was whining about that very issue: the fact that Google has now dropped his device from "official" support with 7.1.2 and he was wondering the same thing about why they did it with a point release which is at most trivial to any degree and not just keep providing said point releases till 8.0 hits the download repository for the AOSP branch sometime later this year. I asked him if he installed any custom ROMs or did anything other that pure stock Android on the device and he was flabbergasted at the suggestion - for me personally the issue was the fact that he's a member of XDA-Developers, the single largest source of smartphone customization materials on the entire freakin' Internet (not that he's a developer, that's not a requirement of course) and he was acting like my questioning of him in that respect was an insult or something. As if owning a Nexus device had some disclaimer at the time of purchase saying "You can't run anything but whatever Google tells you to run on this device or else..." or words to that effect, it was hilarious.

I commented that he could be running 7.1.2 in a matter of minutes after backing up his data and installing an AOSP-based ROM, either a heavily customized one or one that had practically nothing added to the bare AOSP branch compiled code for the Nexus 6 that's out there available right now. When Android 8.0 rolls out later this year guess what, that Nexus 6 will have people cranking out 8.0-based ROMs for it, no problems at all, and probably well into the Android 9.0 life cycle too, long past what Google considers to be "acceptable" in terms of the lifespan.

I swear I didn't see his face but I'm absolutely positive that when he read my reply he either a) spit out whatever he was drinking or consuming in utter disgust at my suggestion or b) screamed out loud cursing me to a damnation even I shudder to think about. :)

Anyway, it seems like the overwhelming majority of Nexus and Pixel device owners never seem to grasp the simple wonderful fact that Google, in its benevolence on the matter (yeah, I know, laughable right?), doesn't limit those devices in basically any manner with respect to the Android running on it aka you're free to install whatever you want on it with no really ill effects. No, it doesn't require a degree in rocket science to do it, usually takes nothing more than adjusting a few settings on the device (enable ADB, etc), plugging it into a computer (running Windows preferably), downloading whatever custom ROM you're wanting to play around with (there are literally hundreds of ROMs out for Nexus devices of all kinds and dozens upon dozens for Pixel devices), Google Apps (of various shapes and packages), backing up your data (remarkably Google offers that capability as part of Android and using "the cloud" if you keep it enabled which is the default), then opening a Command Prompt and typing a few commands, like 25 minutes tops and it's a new device in almost every software-based respect that matters.

I get why so many folks aren't interested in this aspect, I'm simply pointing out that as a Nexus or Pixel device owner it's an option there for the taking that comes as a bonus of sorts with the price you paid for having a pure Android device from Google itself or at least partially as they co-design them with the hardware OEMs they choose.

Guess this is somewhat off-topic but it kinda popped into the consciousness when I saw all the Nexus 6 talk. :) Google does pretty well at avoiding "planned obsolescence" unlike Apple does but even so there is a point where a manufacturer just isn't going to continue putting support into a device, sadly smartphones and other digital devices in today's world are (even more) rapidly becoming complete items of disposable tech to make landfills even taller I suppose.

At least with a lot of Android devices that allow for customization of various levels, you have the options available unlike with "that other big smartphone maker" that wants to keep all their products smelling fruity fresh and at the first hint of aging they toss 'em out. Rotten way of doing things all the way to the core, right? :D
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Well said and as the main culprit of mentioning the N6, i am well aware of the benefits of a Nexus device.

I am actually running PureNexus in mine and will continue that route or go the LineageOS, but as you said, it does involve extra work and it also brings another set of problems, the biggest one is the unofficial nature of those ROMs.

How about if Nate (Beans, creator and maintainer of PureNexus) decides to move on and stop fighting the obsolescence of the N6? Then i have to hunt another rom, backup my files, flash the one and hope all goes well.

Or maybe, i have done the rom route for far too long and just want an android device that receives prompts updates for far longer than two years.

Yes, ios devices receive far more updates, but i prefer android devices, prefer the flexibility offered by it, but as i stated, Pixels current prices, update situation and support issues like what Kyle went thru , can and make anyone be weary of them.

Yes, this went way off topic, but perhaps, everyone can meet somewhere in the middle.
 
grtitan said:
Or maybe, i have done the rom route for far too long and just want an android device that receives prompts updates for far longer than two years.
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Well good luck with that because no manufacturer - not even Google themselves if they bought out a smartphone OEM and literally started making them themselves - would guarantee a lifespan of more than 24 months, that's just not going to happen. As I noted earlier in this thread and another person mentioned as well after that Google has had a tendency to support - with updates of various kinds - some Nexus devices well outside that 24 month "soft cap" but they only guarantee you'll get updates for 2 years aka 24 months.

So it's a crap shoot no matter how one looks at the situation - even the Pixel devices don't have a longer guarantee than two years and I think you yourself pointed out the Pixel has been out for coming up on a year soon so, that's going to be interesting to see how it works out after that 2 year soft cap is crossed. I think they'll probably go past the 24 month point personally, but it remains to be seen and who knows what's coming in 2018. :D
 
Tiberian said:
Well good luck with that because no manufacturer - not even Google themselves if they bought out a smartphone OEM and literally started making them themselves - would guarantee a lifespan of more than 24 months, that's just not going to happen. As I noted earlier in this thread and another person mentioned as well after that Google has had a tendency to support - with updates of various kinds - some Nexus devices well outside that 24 month "soft cap" but they only guarantee you'll get updates for 2 years aka 24 months.

So it's a crap shoot no matter how one looks at the situation - even the Pixel devices don't have a longer guarantee than two years and I think you yourself pointed out the Pixel has been out for coming up on a year soon so, that's going to be interesting to see how it works out after that 2 year soft cap is crossed. I think they'll probably go past the 24 month point personally, but it remains to be seen and who knows what's coming in 2018. :D
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Project treble might be something that will help and the first Pixel is going to be part of it.

And again, my first point about this whole mess was the fact the i personally don't believe that a new pixel should be priced as it was this past October.

What i really don't understand why everyone here is ok with the 24 months thing. People here are all really loaded that can justify around 500 bucks a year on new cell phones per year.
 
Well if they were just cellphones then no, nobody would spend that kind of money for them if all they were capable of doing was making or receiving a voice phone call and sending or receiving an SMS message - all the aspects of smartphones are what people are paying for which is an entirely different thing: it's like saying you're carrying a "wireless" rotary phone around with you vs carrying around a wireless laptop, terrible analogy I know but it's what came to mind.

But some folks just gotta live on the bleeding edge of new technology and so they're willing to pay for the privilege of doing so, I'm not against that in any respect: people are welcome to blow their cash and fortunes on whatever they want for all I care. What I have issues with is the pricing that the companies tend to charge for some new tech devices, and the Pixel was absolutely one of those devices that was like "Ok, not interested in the looks, the specs aren't impressive, it'll have faster updates since it's a pure Android device but, HOLY CRAP look at that price, ouch..." and that was that.

Anyway, we're both off-topic now and since the actual on-topic aspect has been apparently resolved as Kyle noted in his particular case I suppose we should be moving along. :)
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
It's funny.

I have Project Fi, and I have never had anything but excellent interactions with support, so much so that it has made me swear off all other carriers.

(Maybe Fi subscribers get better support than those who buy the phones and use them on other networks?)

I'm guessing this is less about their support being untruthful, and more about "someone at Google fucked up" and the support staff didn't know what the hell was going on, or how to respond.

We knew about their "anti-scalping" efforts preventing commercial resale of phones, to prevent douchebags from buying the phones and trying to turn a quick buck online. I'm guessing someone misinterpreted or misapplied the policy and there were inadequate controls to prevent a huge automatic blacklisting from going through without the correct people reviewing it.

Frustrating, I'm sure, but over time I have learned to never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence :p

I'm glad it's back and running, but Google really ought to compensate everyone who was affected for the inability to use their phones for days. Maybe a token gift certificate or something and admitting that try screwed up? They certainly have the money...
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Agreed 50%. I'm a Fi user and the support has been satisfactory. But the lack of transparency in this issue is really not adding to my experience. I am worried that my buyer will potentially get her Pixel blacklisted some day, which will in turn back fires on me. "Lucky" we have Kyle to be one of the affected user and this thing gets addressed.
 
All the update support discussion really deserves another thread. Has nothing to do with this thread and it can go on for years, as we've seen in other more "mainstream“ android/apple websites.
 
I had to use Google support twice for my Pixel experience:
1) Bad camera/auto-focus. Replacement was a-okay though.
2) Bad AC adapter. Replacement sent - pretty straight-forward.

I can't say whether it was a plus or minus, cuz frankly, it only just met expectations.
IMO, after reading Kyle's ordeal above, Google's reputation is well-deserved.
 
Glad its all working again
Also nuts..I'm looking for phones that won't work right in the US but might over here in Ireland
Was gonna shoot you an offer
Little point now :)
 
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