Saying Goodbye to the Original Pixel XL (Premium)

Over the weekend, I prepped my original Pixel XL for shipment back to Google and what I hope is a $400 credit towards my new Pixel 2 XL. It's time to say goodbye.

As you may know, I had a rough year with the Pixel XL, which I ordered as soon as Google announced the device back in October 2016. My first impressions were that Google was clearly copying the design of the iPhone, the camera was excellent, and that it was too expensive. A day later, I observed that the display seemed a bit smallish, and that I should have ordered a version with more than 32 GB of storage.

In my review a month later, I expressed my disappointment in Google's direction: Here was a phone that was much more expensive than its predecessor but didn't offer any meaningful advantages. It also fell short of the iPhone models whose design Google was copying.

Six months into my year with the Pixel XL, I wrote a follow-up. The price and derivative design continued to be negatives, and I was able to add performance creep to that list. (It's never gone away.) The camera, of course, is amazing, and I like its clean Android image and Project Fi compatibility. Interestingly, those three "pros" have very much guided me in my search for a new phone this past fall.

When I ordered my second Pixel 2 XL from Google---you may recall that my initial order, for a black and white model, wouldn't have arrived until mid-November---I specified that I wanted to trade-in my original Pixel XL, and was told I should be getting a $400 credit, which seems fair.

I had purchased that first Pixel XL using Google Store Financing. Whatever you think of the price of these things, this option is more than fair: The payments are based on a 24-month loan, and there's no interest charged on phone purchases. I paid off the Pixel XL sometime earlier this year---I don't recall when exactly---so I didn't owe anything.

But I did use Google Store Financing again because a) I don't have $1000 burning a hole in my pocket, and b) I would be getting some form of credit by returning my first Pixel XL. Assuming I do get that $400 credit, that means I'll owe about $625 all told. And I do have that much in my PayPal account, so I will pay it off immediately.

The suspiciously small return envelope arrived for the original Pixel sometime this past weekend, but it lacks enough padding, so I'll probably wrap up the device a bit better to be safe. But before I could do that, I needed to prep the phone for its goodbye.

That means a few things. There's content on there I needed to get off. And because I had been running beta versions of Android on the device---currently version 8.1---I decided to flash it back to the latest stock image, which is for Android 8.0. That last bit was probably unnecessary. But. You know.

As you may know, I back up my phone-based photos to both Google Play Photos and OneDrive, and I recommend that you do the same. But every time I wipe out a phone, I manually copy all of i...