Hi phone buyers, I'm not intending to rain on this new pixel but to educate that naked andriod has down sides!
My wife when from samsung 4 +/- to Pixel XL2. Thinking dumping samsung bloatware was going to be wonderful!! OMG no!
We had no idea how much usability samsung added to android: badges (those numbers on each app) that show how many SMS, emails, XYZ events you've missed. OMG it was unthinkable that a modern smart phone would have so many unread messages in all my apps and give zero indication from just looking at the home screen. Android support forums made fun of me, saying I should go back to iphone if I wanted counts on each of my apps!!!! Pixel / Android thinks those irratating transient notifications are sufficient. I remention: transient!!!!! Once you click "clear" all those events are gone. you can't figure out what came in!!
If I'm just wasting time, and Pixel or android fixed this ok, I appologize!
Also the menues to quickly turn on / off bluetooth, volume up / down Samsung makes easy with a swip down, click top, slide back and forth is NOT native android!! What a number of mindless clicks to turn bluetooth on/off, volume up down, its muted OMG how to figure out who turned volume down???
Please folks, whether this new phone or another, check that the useability you need is in the phone. Don't assume like we did!!
I was wrong!!!! I thought it was unthinkable that a modern phone would not have those little numbers on your apps showing missed SMS etc!! I was Wrong! Back to samsung we go!
You might wack me with; well you can download another SMS app or XYZ that has counts built in,,, yes Ii wasted a ton of time and partially fixed that. But still no LOUD alerts, or continuous beeping when missed alerts, decent config menu up top and so many things my samsung does. And basically I'm a samsung hater, I just hate naked android more. Geeze!