Google Pixel - User POV

So ever since I heard that Google want to make a phone, I was like super excited. Most of the people I know have a hard on for Iphone, but I looked at Iphone, tried it and like nah.

Though I am not really the really fanatical Android user who rooted their phone. I used to consider rooting my phone because I don't get why some UI is so limiting. I mean, we bought the phone and own the phone, why are you developers so anal about letting users have more control over our phone?

I think after the inclusion of China made phones have changed the industry a lot, and their anal control issues gets a bit looser. Also most of them started to lose out the shitty heavy UI that is integrated into their phone, to differentiate their phone from others but just make me moan and sigh on why are my phone so laggy.

Ok. I did not mean to go on and on about how Android had evolved to the better nowadays.

Anyway back to the first sentence. Super excited. Listened to the Google execs drone on and on about their miraculous new phone during the launch and was like hopping and hoping when can I get it. They waxed on poetic compliments on how the great the phone is. Then it went live, or being sold to US markets and reviews started to come in. Most are gushing. I was like, when can I get this phone laahhh! But Google is being super laggy like Android of the past in releasing it to other countries. I mean the only Asian country they released it to, for now is India. Sheeesh.

My husband knows how much I want it, and after much protestations on my end on how much it cost bought me one nonetheless. Since it is not still available in Malaysia, he have to buy it in an airport during a layover in Dubai. A complete surprise , I might add. I was just sitting on my couch and he just handed the Pixel case like he bought me chocolates.

Unboxing the Pixel. LOL. ( I think unboxing video is the silliest invention men/women created) .

So been using more than a month now, and here goes my thoughts on it. I think it is only apt to review it my way. Not a tech writer so not gonna spend my time writing on how fast the processor is ( pretty fast ) but more on what I like and don't like about the phone.

Like

- Pretty fast like I said before

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- Pretty good camera. Got a lot of cool function . Esp like the panorama function, the 360 function and the blur function.

Trying out the blur function. Lapar pulak tengok bihun tomyam

Edited: A larger panorama view of my messy bookcase. A purge is needed soon

- I like how it is so pleasing to hold. I don't get carpal tunnel much, The phone also feels sleek, and don't feel cheap. (well, it better don't feel cheap. Mahal kut), Though I might add husband bought me the Pixel biasa, not the XL. Not sure how nice that feels.

- Battery while not phenomenal, is pretty damn good. It can last in a reasonable amount of time. Pokemon Go can be played without battery draining like running water.

- Since my old phone do not have the fingerprint function yet, I was very impressed with this fingerprint unlock phone thingy. The Pixel one places it at the back, which I like because it is so much more user friendly that way and , yes it is quite fast to unlock too.

The back of the Pixel is very distinctive. Fingerprint unlock at the back

- The unlimited photo and video storage offered by google when backed up into the google drive/space . I had run out of my Dropbox and was afraid the same is gonna happened to my Google drive so this. is. a . godsend.

- Does not overheat. All my previous phones have tendency to heat after playing games or while charging. Haven't experienced this yet with my Pixel.

Dislike

- Can't really handle too many apps being opened. I kept on forgetting to close. And if you open a really heavy app while there are a lot of apps running at the back, it can hang a bit or the app may crash.

- The ringtone being offered is very limited and soft sounding to my liking. I have to download another ringtone I guess. Havent try that out.

- The speaker is at the bottom and do not rock my world enough. It is reasonably loud, but I was used to my Oppo that have really loud volume.

Can't think of more to add. All in all, I am pretty satisfied and I love my new phone. 

My handy dandy helper

I mentioned last birthday, I requested for the most unromantic request. A robotic vacuum cleaner. 

Frankly I am tired of vacuuming everyday and feeling bits and pieces at my feet whenever I walked in the house. 

With 2 toddlers and 4 cats, the house can accumulate quite a pile of dirt and dust. So masa Maybank treats fair tahun lepas , I remembered I was absolutely transfixed at the Neato showroom. Tapi time tu macam malas nak beli sebab I don't know anything about the product yet and to throw down a lot of money on a whim is a little scary. 

So my birthday came, and I insisted to have a vacuum. Robotic vacuum cleaner would be more beneficial to my well being than a diamond. And make cleaning the house chores a bit faster . Anything that lessen house chores is a plus. 

So while my husband is ready to look into Ecovacs , I remembered that Neato booth and I remembered how I like that it is the 'smart' type of robot vacuum. My requirements goes like 

1. It can somewhat scan the room and run through the room. 

2. Can go up a few inches to vacuum carpet because everybody have carpets. 

3. Can vacuum corner reasonably because usually that is where the dust lies 

Why I choose the Neato? 

1. It fulfilled the above. 

2. Reasonably price. 

3. Great reviews. I always scoured reviews in the internet, and for a lot of the other brand it is kinda 50-50. But for Neato, it is almost overwhelmingly good. 

4. A clear place where to send if need for repairs. Need to make sure all the spareparts can easily be obtained kan. 

Went into Lazada to see what sort of Neato they have, because I have no idea where to buy it on a physical shop, found a few models on sale and show this particular model to my husband because it was going for under 2k at Lazada.  It is the Neato XV 11 . It is an old model, 4 years back I guess. But since it was cheap, and the reviews are good, eh why not lah.  

Neato XV-11 . Pic is from Wiki. 

The real thing. People call it ugly. I like its outdated Star Wars quality. 

So the vacuum is now in service at my home for months. 

( I have no patience to write down clear cohesive paragraph, so point form again ) . 

How do I find it? 

The good? 

1. It picked up the dirt and dust nicely. Like I said, I have 4 cats. The amount of hairball is unbelievable sometimes. I have seen cat fur rolling around the house like tumbleweeds. No more! There is some stray cat fur balls sometimes but prett ok lah. 

2. Open corner ( the one not blocked with tiny chairs or whatever, is always clean. 

3. OK battery lah. If it doesn't get stuck, it can vacuum the lower house and got back to its charging station in reasonable time. But my home not that big either. 

4. Easy display. It will show a message if the filter and dust bin is full.

It also have good manners. 

5. Scheduling . Can schedule for it to run to whatever time it pleases you. 

6. Easy to empty the dust bin.

The dust bin is a bit small, so we usually need to clean it after 3 to 4 days. But the amount of dust it picked up is amazing lah

The bad ? 

1. It can get stuck. It is not that predictable. Like usually it can goes around a chair reasonably well, but once it get stuck , it really get stuck, I will place it somewhere else, then it goes right back under the chair and start to get stuck again. I proceed to do the same again with same result! LOL. But it happened only sometimes la. Have to rearrange the furniture a bit. 

2. It sometimes persist in cleaning the same area a few times longer than other area. I have no idea why? Is it because it is way dirtier??? 

3. A bit noisy. Aziz will complain if the vacuum is running when he is watching TV. But not as loud as my old Dyson. 

4. Should have a child lock ( or i couldnt find it). During the first 2 or 3 months, Saif and Aziz were forever turning on the vacuum. Once on, Saif will cried and run to me because he thinks the vacuum is chasing him. LOL. 

Try nak bukak dust bin tu pulak. Nasib baik yang tu susah sikit nak bukak. 

Overall. Pretty good . I am quite satisfied on how it run, the house is less dusty. Cut down my vacuuming hours a lot. Have to run the old vacuum too sometimes to pick up places where the Neato might left out and the carpet. But the Neato picks up dirt and hair from carpet reasonably well too. Better than some Electrolux vacuum I had used I say. ( Dyson is best still. ) . So yes. I am satisfied with Neato. It can get stucks, but it doesn't happened often ( as long as you pick stuffs up) but overall it is better than I expected. A totally worth it birthday present. My friends say I am very practical. LOL. Maybe this year I will opt for an unpractical gift. 

Unfortunately I do not have any funny pictures or videos involving the cats! Damn it! LOL. The cats are quite wary of this moving weird thing, but they just steer clear of it. None try to chase it. Bobby did tried to pee on it. Jeez Bobby. 

One very good thing about having Neato in the house is that it forces me to pick up the kids toy and put it away every night no matter how tired I am because I don't want the Neato to get stuck. So it also forced me to tidy my house a bit. 

Edited: Change the video because I just realized it were unplayable before. So yeps... below are the Neato in action. 

New phone - my Find 7 review.

Beria kan aku cakap aku taknak new phone, or considering new one but then I got one for my birthday ( which was on the 21st Nov tu ). While my heart was set on Xiaomi 4 or OnePlus One but nak dapatkan phone tu macam sama susah nak kahwin dengan anak raja tahapnye, my husband bought me the Oppo Find7. Memula aku macam merajuk sebab ingatkan die tak belikan ape2 for my birthday. Dah la kek pon lupa beli. Hiba ibu mengandung. 

Naseb baik lepas I tanye maghrib tu mana my kek die terus beli. Kalau tak ade aku pegi batu belah batu bertangkup... sebab malam tu je terus contractions in labour. Hahaha. 

I was very specific on the specifications I want in a phone. I wanted a 3GB RAM, and at least 32 GB worth of internal phone storage. 16GB no longer cuts it. Also the screen is as big as Note 2 as I am used to that. So that does not left a whole lot of choice. 

So my phone looks kinda like this 

I think the back looks kinda like that because the phone come with a faux leather casing and you need to tanggalkan the back of the phone and attached it to the casing, where I kinda dig because it does not add unnecessary thickness to the phone. 

While I am still wondering if the OnePlus One is any good, I kinda glad I didnt buy it because there seems to be some issues with Cyanogenmod and OnePlus One . I was hoping to test the Cyanogenmod CM11 , though not that I can't still test it out by rooting any Android phone. Tapi aku memang cautious la nak root phone. So that's that. The Find uses the Color OS and I am not too thrilled with the idea of using Color OS at first but after trying it out, at least it is better than Samsung punye Touchwiz or the bloatwares Sony likes to put on their phones. I am getting used to it and kinda liking it. 

I also like that I can change the theme of the phone and currently I set it to Arale or to avoid copyright issues the designer put it as Qrale. Hehe. My husband used to say that Arale reminded him of me. 

The only downside to this phone is due to its upside. The OPPO Quad HD display screen is stunningly crisp and clear. Gambar2 in the phone memang nampak awesome. But sebab tu jugak battery die memang cepat habis la walaupon capacity battery die quite tinggi. I usually gets around 5 or 6 hours with the phone before I need to charge, tapi tu jugak sebab bile dah nyusu budak memang pegang phone je la selalu. 

My lockscreen. And I love how it looks.

But I think because they know that their phone just eats up the battery, they provide it with the fast charger tu. In the box we will get 2 chargers. One slightly bulkier than the other. The bulkier one can charge your phone from 0 to 100% in under an hour. And I found out the regular charger charge pretty quickly too. If my phone tinggal 40% like that, it will get 90% if I charge it to a little bit over an hour. 

So while the battery drain is kinda annoying I guess the fast charger kinda counterbalance it. Though not a good options if you happens to be travelling. And I don't really like using powerbank. Aku rase macam leceh, kena buat keje 2 kali gitu. Tapi kite tengok nanti sebab so far I am stuck at home with the phone and can charge whenever I want, so if keluar nak tengok gak berapa lama boleh bertahan. 

The phone is fast and smooth though there is some slight delay but not noticeable. I also like that I can unlock the phone by double tapping the home button though at first aku blindly tapped je mana2 kat bawah sebab tak biasa lagi. 

Oh and for the camera quality so far so good. Especially kalau tangkap selfie. Hahaha. I hate taking selfie because I am very self concious on how I look for the camera. Tapi die ade options Beautify dan gile flawless la kulit ai bile guna option ni

Selfie dengan Aziz with the Beautify option. 

Haha. I think I will be using this options only for selfie. Muka pon nampak kurus sikitttt. 

Thank you to husband sebab beli phone as hadiah walaupon at first I macam resisting the idea. Tapi bile dah pakai not bad gak. Hoping this Oppo phone will withstand rain and shine for at least the next 2 years. 

Sekian review picisan dari pemilik Oppo yang baru pegang ni for more than a week .