I wouldn't normally be writing a ZDNet piece this week as I am on vacation in New Orleans -- and enjoying the sights, food, music and culture. To photo chronicle my week in the Big Easy, I brought two smartphones with me, my and my .
Shortly after setting up the Pixel 6 a few weeks ago -- while the product could still be returned -- I experienced an issue where the OS received an initial over-the-air update and when it rebooted, it came up in recovery mode, being unable to read the file system -- and it forced a factory reset. So I had to set up the phone again from a backup less than a day after the initial setup. I dismissed this initial problem as a first-day or first-week glitch for a new product and continued using the device.
Several weeks have gone by, and I'm on vacation with the phone, having taken a few hundred photos with it. Google sent another over-the-air update this week, which I accepted. The same thing happened -- the device rebooted, it entered recovery mode, and it forced a file system factory reset. The photo of my screen when this occurred is below.
Look, maybe this is just bad luck with a phone, but had I known this was going to be a problem child device, I would have returned it for a full refund and waited a few months to get something else with Android 12 on it. As far as I am concerned, this should never happen with Google's flagship Android developer device. I'm now out of the product return window, with device replacement as my only official option if the company deems it to be defective and this just isn't a result