Pixel 6 Availability?

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Max
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#2804706 31-Oct-2021 15:08

prat33k:
mulac: A few people looked at it on Page 4 of this thread but B&H wouldn’t sell to NZ

Huh.. seems like they are actually shipping now? Earlier it was saying "We can't ship this item to NZ" or something. I tried and it seems they are even giving customs estimate + delivery charges to NZ.

For pixel 6, there shouldn't even be customs to be paid as this is under $1000 nzd.

Still says no shipping to NZ

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

hadenkose

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#2804707 31-Oct-2021 15:08

maxeon:
hadenkose: Looks like my Pixel 6 Pro has made it to Auckland already. Due for delivery on Wednesday, but might hopefully arrive earlier. Some interesting reviews coming out. Most seem pretty positive. Even if the upgraded hardware hasn't been fully optimised yet, I'm hopeful that Google's software will catch up with it eventually. (I've already had a play around with magic eraser on my Pixel 5 and it's pretty fun). Not bothered with no 5G, as 2degrees doesn't have it yet anyway. It's gonna be a long day tomorrow refreshing my tracking page every 5 minutes!

Looking forward to your hands on experience. I on the fence about the 6 or the pro due to the size. Where did you order it from?

I ordered it from JB in Australia and had it sent to my brother's place over there. Had him post it to me through DHL.
I'm interested about the size as well - it'll be different going back to a big phone from pixel 5.

j4ke

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#2804708 31-Oct-2021 15:18

everettpsycho: Has anyone ever tried B&H video for this sort of thing. Looks like they will ship here at is prices plus $40 shipping. They have estimated about $116 of tax as well.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1665071-REG/google_ga02900_us_pixel_6_dual_sim_128gb.html

i dont think its possible

It gives you a pop up when you add it to cart. You can dismiss the pop up but keep going, but then you reach a point where you have to click 'Continue to payment' and every time you do you get this pop up without being able to progress.

everettpsycho

614 posts

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#2804711 31-Oct-2021 15:28

Ignore me then. Weirdly that doesn't display on my phone, when you get quite far down the checkout process it then decides to say they actually won't ship here. Poor website design really as they clearly know I'm here as the product page is showing the local carriers.

old3eyes

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#2804712 31-Oct-2021 15:30

j4ke:

everettpsycho: Has anyone ever tried B&H video for this sort of thing. Looks like they will ship here at is prices plus $40 shipping. They have estimated about $116 of tax as well.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1665071-REG/google_ga02900_us_pixel_6_dual_sim_128gb.html

i dont think its possible

It gives you a pop up when you add it to cart. You can dismiss the pop up but keep going, but then you reach a point where you have to click 'Continue to payment' and every time you do you get this pop up without being able to progress.

I wonder what these manufacturers restrictions are??

Regards,

Old3eyes

old3eyes

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#2804717 31-Oct-2021 15:40

NikT:

PB Tech is 100% interested in ranging Pixel. Can't speak for anyone else. :)

jjnz1:

There are a lot of threads on the internet including in Googles support forum, with Google blaming (eligibly) the Telcos for not opening up their VoLTE and 5G networks to specifically allow for Pixel phones.

Who is correct? Who do we champion to enable VoLTE?

It is entirely on Google, all about getting the right people talking to the right people + actually putting the engineering resource in to do it - which, spoilers, they're not going to do if the products are not officially available in market.

I wonder what the telcos are supposed to do about it, just email "someone @ google dot com" at random with "hello here are our sensitive VoLTE and 5G network specs, please enable"? How are they to know who the right person is if the right team at Google does not reach out?

5G in particular feels like a deliberate snub for all networks bar the chosen few - If <not a whitelisted network> then <disable 5G>. It's not really, ostensibly this is because the device's battery life would tank were 5G enabled in a market without 5G, but I don't personally like the way these things have been locked down in software given past precedent for open, global, interoperability. Give users the choice to use the hardware they paid for, people know what they're about.

VoLTE needs network-specific settings. 5G NSA so far in NZ has been largely straightforward with fairly globally standard anchor bands, and would work (albeit without optimisation) if those restrictions were lifted. The majority of vendors globally don't lock this down, and 5G works out of the box. Google are not the only ones doing it this way, see also e.g. OnePlus. That one I'm hopeful will be solved sooner than Pixel, the ColorOS migration could potentially bring OPPO NZ's hard work and significant investment partnering with NZ operators along for the ride.

Hi Nik. Thanx for your input regarding 5 G on the Pixel. Today i got an email from PB TEch on the latest Motorola 5G phones. Do these work in NZ or are they like the pixel and haven't they been certified by NZ carriers??

Regards,

Old3eyes

NikT

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#2804726 31-Oct-2021 16:24

Folks - asking local telcos that don't range the product if it will work with their networks won't get you useful answers. They don't sell it or have a relationship with the appropriate teams on Google's side, so they won't have any inside info. Anything they do tell you will be based off of their generic device policies and publicly available information - the poor support agents are most likely Googling it just like you are.

Google's public help sections will similarly be of little use. As NZ is an unsupported market, there is no official support or info available.

So: There are two ways to get concrete information.

Someone gets a Pixel 6 series device and pops an NZ SIM in it to see what it does out of the box

Someone digs the appropriate configuration files out of a Pixel 6 series device / gets it to interface with the as-yet-unknown set of engineering tools required

Modem configuration isn't a total black-box mystery, for Qualcomm-based devices the modem is usually configured via a simple XML file that says (to paraphrase and oversimplify) if <supported network> then <enable specific features for that network>, or <don't>. Networks which have no specific configuration get only a baseline of the modem features enabled. This can generally be modified via Qualcomm's engineering tools, but tends to be overwritten on every OTA update, and - depending on the vendor - can be a real pain to modify. Here is an example of a carrier_policy XML for the curious, there is plenty of info out there with the right search terms, such as this wonderful blog.

This gets slightly more interesting because Pixel 6 is running the new Tensor platform, based on Samsung's Exynos chipsets with Shannon modems, which work a bit differently in the modem department to Qualcomm's. For example, you can dial *#0808# on modern Samsung devices to get to the required USB settings for modem logs and debugging (helpfully, Samsung have kept this consistent, and it works on their Snapdragon devices too). It remains to be seen if Pixel 6 makes the Shannon modem configuration options available to end-users, whether root is required, or whether a completely different set of tools is needed.

Always fascinating and fun to see smart people take things apart to see how they work. Downside is this stuff is firmly enthusiast territory, way out of mass market-land, you've got to be pretty keen to get this far down in the weeds. Looking forward to the results, I predict no 5G and no VoLTE but someone will eventually find a workaround - which will require re-working-around for every software update. YMMV on whether this is too hard basket or not. Either way, it makes bringing Pixels to retail in NZ a no-go - all the dropshippers advertising "Pixel 5G" in NZ are quite misleading.

old3eyes:

Hi Nik. Thanx for your input regarding 5 G on the Pixel. Today i got an email from PB TEch on the latest Motorola 5G phones. Do these work in NZ or are they like the pixel and haven't they been certified by NZ carriers??

Good ol' Moto! I have been a big supporter of their products for a long time. Motorola's 5G devices do work as expected on 5G in NZ. Motorola phones are officially available here, and have been for many years, just through the open market rather than through operator channels - VoLTE should be a go for Spark and Vodafone, too (not Skinny just yet - working with them on that one). The first 5G Moto device in market was the 2020 edge 5G, which received an OTA in August last year to liven 5G for NZ networks - all 5G devices since then have been good to go out of the box. Motorola does hold relationships with NZ telcos. Suffice to say, anything you see marketed as 5G-capable from PB, including Motorola, Xiaomi, and ASUS, has been confirmed to work as expected on NZ 5G networks.

The edge 20 pro is a really nice piece of kit, I'm daily driving one at the minute. Astonishing how much better battery life is with the TSMC-made Snapdragon 870 vs. the Samsung-made Snapdragon 888, it is night and day. Going two days between charges on a 4,500mAh battery, with reasonably intensive workloads, which handily beats SD888 devices with 5,000mAh and goes toe-to-toe with the large dual-cell 6,000mAh battery in the 888-powered ASUS ROG 5.

5G 'certification' is an interesting one, as there is no standard per se on how this is done, and it's nebulous for open market brands - the ranging and testing process is individual for each network. To take a product to market in NZ, it needs to be tested and certified for electrical safety and emissions (aka RCM), but there is no industry-standard body for mobile network testing as the telcos do this themselves for their own networks, and generally only for devices they are ranging. If a telco is ranging a device and needs to test + sign off every OTA before go-live, this can get quite expensive and resource-intensive, and means there has to be a large MOQ of the device to ameliorate that cost over the total number (consider poor Spark and the sheer number of OTAs for their Nokia Android One portfolio, crikey their teams must be busy every month!). You can always guarantee the network trying to sell you a handset has tested it, and these days there do not tend to be too many issues using one device on another network as dual SIM = the manufacturer expects multiple networks will be used.

This high MOQ has historically been a key factor in devices not making it to market in a small country like ours. The trend towards global standards for 3G and 4G made that a lot easier; as long as the settings are correct and the device is not woefully inefficient or badly configured, everything will generally work as expected for calls/texts/data. 5G and VoLTE have derailed this a bit with individual network configurations, whitelists at both the software level and the network level (thankfully not in NZ at this stage), and a subset of vendors, including Google, have simply locked these features down for our market with no user-accessible option to open it up.

5G currently works in NZ on devices from:

Samsung

Apple

OPPO

Huawei

Motorola

Nokia

ASUS ROG

Xiaomi

Specialists, e.g. CPE

5G does not currently work in NZ on devices from:

Google

OnePlus

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MaxineN

Max
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#2804740 31-Oct-2021 17:35

Per the discussion about the SD870. Yeah it's a beast of an SoC. But it's also just a 865++ with the X55 built in now ;)

Per the discussion about digging around with a Pixel 6. I have the tools(minus ShannonDM) and the knowledge from messing around with the Oneplus 8 so I know where to look. Just need the device.

Another thing to note is that Google is very prone to updating the OS and basically removing all the work done so this would be a monthly thing which is not ideal. Having a permanent solution might require Root and currently Magisk doesn't work in A12 yet.

Another thing to note that because there's no "official" support even if we did get it working, it could just fall over and break connectivity completely(noticed this on the OP8).

Trying to get unsupported devices can be a mess and Oneplus is easy ish to work around. Google is a nightmare. Maybe the Oppo merge + ColorOS can fix that who knows.

Google? They need to bring the device to the tables.

Thank you Nik for bringing to light a lot of things and explaining some as well. Valuable insight honestly.

Ramblings from a mysterious lady who's into tech. Warning I may often create zingers.

prat33k

182 posts

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#2804746 31-Oct-2021 17:45

j4ke:
everettpsycho: Has anyone ever tried B&H video for this sort of thing. Looks like they will ship here at is prices plus $40 shipping. They have estimated about $116 of tax as well.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1665071-REG/google_ga02900_us_pixel_6_dual_sim_128gb.html

i dont think its possible

It gives you a pop up when you add it to cart. You can dismiss the pop up but keep going, but then you reach a point where you have to click 'Continue to payment' and every time you do you get this pop up without being able to progress.

Okay, now I'm confused here. i went to their website, added p6 to the cart. It still gives me shipping costs to New Zealand specifically selected in the cart. Next option is to go and pay so i donno if it is something mobile phone vs desktop or just me.

Check this is what I see on my checkout page

j4ke

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#2804842 31-Oct-2021 18:41

Throws an error when you put the address in :( I think Dicksmith is the best option, even if they throw $100 on

old3eyes

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#2804883 31-Oct-2021 20:37

Thanx NikT for the Motorola info. Will look at them a bit closer.

Regards,

Old3eyes

everettpsycho

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#2804944 31-Oct-2021 21:39

Those Motorola's look great on most fronts but I'm after wireless charging as well which is really limiting the field for upgrading. I'm not in any rush to move on from my pixel 3xl but the battery is starting to show its age now so an upgrade will be in the cards soon.

Guess based on what's out there at the moment I'll be compromising on something, whether it's 5g in the pixel, wireless charging on the Motos or moving away from a stock Android experience to another device.

emenent7426

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#2804952 31-Oct-2021 23:25

Mine is here now. Just unboxed and setting up :)

prat33k

182 posts

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#2804961 1-Nov-2021 01:28

emenent7426: Mine is here now. Just unboxed and setting up :)

Damn wow, you must be the first to get in NZ then i guess haha.. Where did you get it from though? They were officially just starting to ship it on 28 Oct I guess.

Even local deliveries by NZpost are taking longer than a week now (at least in Auckland). Impressive that you got it already from overseas.

gcorgnet

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#2805033 1-Nov-2021 08:32

Also keen to hear where you ordered from, @emenent7426. Impressive timing!

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