I remember pretty much my entire phone history.

  • Nokia 3310 I got from my parents when I was in year 6 or 7 because my dumb child brain wanted one.
  • I moved from QLD to NSW and my Dad said it was time to move onto his family post paid plan. So I got an Nokia N95 around late-2008. That thing was SICK.
  • 2 years later (Ah the good old days of Telstra 24 month contracts with subsidised phones) I got an iPhone 4 with the contract renewal.
  • Early 2013 I got the iPhone 5 at the next renewal, but it took ages to arrive due to backorders. Very popular phone.
  • Around late 2014 / early 2015, I got an invite to buy a OnePlus One, the Android Flagship killer phone. Jumped onto that and left the iPhone ecosystem. Decided to go month-to-month with Telstra, didnt get a new phone when that came up for renewal.
  • Dropped the OnePlus One at a nightclub, smashed the screen. Borrowed a friends Nexus 5X in 2016.
  • Early 2017, The borrowed Nexus 5X finally died. Time to move off my dads family plan and onto my own since I was now A Big Boy and in the workforce. Got a Google Pixel XL.
  • Late 2018, Upgrade to a Pixel 3 XL.
  • October 2021, I break the mould and stop buying phones via Telstra contracts for good. I wander in JB Hi-Fi and buy a Pixel 6 over the counter. Woah.

That brings us to now, April 2026. My Pixel 6 is end of support in Q3 this year. No more security updates. Prices on these phones have gone up and up every year.

Google Pixel was (in my opinion) positioned as the BEST mid-tier phone on the market. Samsung locked up the super high end stuff, and Google did everything “just right” enough to be a solid device that I didn’t need to care about. I left my “must root phone and install random shit” phase a few years ago (I think my Pixel XL was the last phone I rooted actually) so I just wanted shit to work. Spotify when I want it, Battery that lasts.

Google nailed this.

But every year, it got a little bit more expensive, so I kept putting it off. My Pixel 6 still worked, I’ll just ride it out.

Well it hit the tie breaker point. Pixel 6 was ending support, a new Pixel 10 was within a carton of beer from the current iPhone 17. Do I switch back after all these years?

Now don’t get me wrong, Apple does some insane shit, but so does Google. I stopped bothering to venture too far outside of Googles walled garden as time went on, so maybe it wont be that bad.

So I bought one. I was a macOS convert these days anyway, might as well go balls deep.

fuck that was expensive (I also had a Pixel Watch 3, so picked up an Apple Watch SE 3 as well.)

Echo’ing what I’ve seen elsewhere, holy shit the Migrate to iOS app to grab all my shit from my Pixel and move it is bad. It barely works, even after several attempts.

It’s slightly more annoying to setup some things, like ringphones need to be imported via Garage Band seemingly, you can’t just grab any old mp3 and hit “make ringphone pls” it seems.

The only major gripe I have is with the “Sleep Alarm” functionality. For some reason, you can not set custom alarm tones IF YOU ARE CONFIGURING A SLEEP ALARM. But if you create a normal alarm instead, it doesn’t connect properly with the watch/phones “upcoming alarms” function properly. What sort of fuckery is this?

I need a hard, aggressive alarm to wake me up, as I sleep like the dead. So I have the sleep alarm configured, and an additional alarm set for 15 minutes later with my normal ring tone to wake me up if/when I miss the first one. (often, it seems so far.)

the options in the sleep alarm vs normal alarm

I took the chance to move to Immich as well since I’m departing the Google Photos ecosystem, but I’ll do another write up on that one.

Overall, It’s a phone, and so far it works as expected. I guess I’ll make a follow up on how I go?