New Pixel 6 Phone
Posted: Sun Jul 17, 2022 9:20 am
Picked up a Pixel 6 Pro for myself, and a slightly smaller Pixel 6 for the wife. Nice phone. I'm ambivalent of the 'live edge' screen though. Seemed stupid on Samsung and seems pointless on this as well. Just makes it harder for a case to protect the edges. Just looks pretty.
However I am loving the phone. My old Pixel 2 was still doing the job, and still has decent battery life, but it's no longer getting updates. New phone is snappier, not that I felt the old one was slow.
I usually do a manual transfer of data, and tediously install my apps and configure settings, but decided to try the new cable transfer system, and I must say Android has greatly improved this. It's not quite a full clone, but very close. The old wireless transfer I last tried when I migrated the wife from to her old Pixel 3a a few years ago was an unmitigated disaster. This worked so much better.
It took about 20 minutes to clone the phone. I did make this easier by pruning my camera photos and uploading a backlog to the server, but I still had 50 GB of data on there.
Almost everything came over. The desktop layout, wallpaper, system settings, even a lot of the non Google app data. I use GNUcash, an open source local file only credit card register, to record credit card transactions, and I expected to have to import the database, but it came right over. Some apps even imported their logins, like Simplenote my note and list app.
Only thing it didn't copy was PDF, Word, and Zip files in my personal folder. I guess Android doesn't recognize those as valid files (I use FX File explorer to open those) so I had to copy that folder over manually. But all my settings for FX Explorer came over, including the credentials to access the shared folder on my server, so that saved a ton of time I usually spend having to setup all those shares so I can transfer files.
Most apps needed me to enter my login credentials, but I made that easier by using a keyboard and mouse. Done this before. Yes you can connect a USB mouse and keyboard to an Android device. It makes entering passwords so much easier. It even supports ctrl+c and ctrl+v copy paste commands (at least in Android 12). FYI: An external mouse and keyboard is very useful to get access to a phone with a broken touch screen. I've salvaged data off a few client's broken phones this way.
Overall a very smooth migration. Setting up a new phone usually takes me a whole day manually, following a long checklist. I had this done in a couple of hours.
However I am loving the phone. My old Pixel 2 was still doing the job, and still has decent battery life, but it's no longer getting updates. New phone is snappier, not that I felt the old one was slow.
I usually do a manual transfer of data, and tediously install my apps and configure settings, but decided to try the new cable transfer system, and I must say Android has greatly improved this. It's not quite a full clone, but very close. The old wireless transfer I last tried when I migrated the wife from to her old Pixel 3a a few years ago was an unmitigated disaster. This worked so much better.
It took about 20 minutes to clone the phone. I did make this easier by pruning my camera photos and uploading a backlog to the server, but I still had 50 GB of data on there.
Almost everything came over. The desktop layout, wallpaper, system settings, even a lot of the non Google app data. I use GNUcash, an open source local file only credit card register, to record credit card transactions, and I expected to have to import the database, but it came right over. Some apps even imported their logins, like Simplenote my note and list app.
Only thing it didn't copy was PDF, Word, and Zip files in my personal folder. I guess Android doesn't recognize those as valid files (I use FX File explorer to open those) so I had to copy that folder over manually. But all my settings for FX Explorer came over, including the credentials to access the shared folder on my server, so that saved a ton of time I usually spend having to setup all those shares so I can transfer files.
Most apps needed me to enter my login credentials, but I made that easier by using a keyboard and mouse. Done this before. Yes you can connect a USB mouse and keyboard to an Android device. It makes entering passwords so much easier. It even supports ctrl+c and ctrl+v copy paste commands (at least in Android 12). FYI: An external mouse and keyboard is very useful to get access to a phone with a broken touch screen. I've salvaged data off a few client's broken phones this way.
Overall a very smooth migration. Setting up a new phone usually takes me a whole day manually, following a long checklist. I had this done in a couple of hours.