Has the Pixel 2 been a nightmare to anyone else?

[J-Wyattsen]

My experience with the Pixel 2 has been a nightmare. I'm intelligent, but not an overly tech-savvy person. My first problem, right out the box, was the phone not allowing me to text certain numbers. It took close to a year for me to find a fix from a forum. At the same time I couldn't get the phone to recognize connected flash drives or communicate with my PC properly. I tried many times to get my photos and videos off the phone to an external device to have a local backup. The phone got so full in the meantime that it finally froze up, and several suggestions can't fix it. I might have to do a factory reset. When I bought the phone Verizon didn't allow customers to do their own ratings. That might have made me wary of buying it in the first place. I'm probably going to leave Verizon (after over a decade) over all this mess. Has anyone else had an experience this bad?

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[boringusername]

I plugged it into my PC via USB cable worked fine. settings-connected devices-USB then select File Transfer

[vzw_customer_support]

We would definitely hate to see you leave the Verizon family after over a decade of loyalty. It's definitely worrying to see that you're unable to transfer your videos and photos to a PC because your Pixel 2 does not recognize connected devices. We want to make sure that we help you get this issue resolved especially because your Pixel 2 has come to a point where it's freezing. Please tell us, do you see an error message or notification on your Pixel 2 or your PC when you connect them? Are you backing up your photos and videos on the Cloud? 

GeovannJ_VZW
If my response answered your question please click the _Correct Answer_ button under my response. This ensures others can benefit from our conversation. Thanks in advance for your help with this!!

[J-Wyattsen]

I was able to transfer some videos and photos, but I couldn't get the Pixel 2 to reliably connect properly. The transfers would initiate, but often fail or time out. My phone is stuck in a boot loop now and nothing has worked to fix it. I don't care at this point. [removed] I think I'm finally seeing Verizon's true colors. It's only a matter of time before I'm gone. 

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[boringusername]

your issue has ZILCH to do with Verizon. Why not go to a Pixel forum on reddit or somewhere isntead of blaming Verizon?

[J-Wyattsen]

You must not have read my original post closely. Part of my problem is that back when I bought my phone Verizon users couldn't rate their own devices. All the ratings were aggregated from outside sources. I've seen that process being heavily manipulated before. I called Verizon customer service to figure out how to rate my device after my initial texting problem and the representative told me individual users couldn't do that. She said instead they could come to this community forum to share their opinions. That's how I found out about this place, and how much later I got the fix to my problem. I don't care what fancy things a phone can do if it can't do the basics. I don't know what I would have done if the contacts I couldn't text were the specific people who were the very closest to me. My problem with Verizon is I feel it was dishonest to present device ratings that hadn't been rated by individual service users on their own site. I see that this is possible now, but I hold the company accountable for the situation that existed when I first bought my phone. 

[mama23dogs]

I had the Pixel, pixel 2 and so happy I got the Pixel 3 XL for both me and my son.

Pixel auto backs up photos to google photos over Wifi.  Photos  can accessEd on any other device - including your PC.  If you don’t have wifi, you can use cable back up.  

And as always, Google is your friend:  https://support.google.com/pixelphone/answer/2840804?hl=en

Lastly, don’t blame the phone if you are finding yourself tech challenged   These smartphones are pretty smart and there are simple ways to get the job done, all you have to do is ask - before you get frustrated 

[J-Wyattsen]

My photos are all apparently safe. I use the word "apparently" because the vast majority of them only exist in the cloud now. One copy of any file controlled by a single entity, even if backed up in multiple databases, is never considered truly safe to me. Very serious photographers don't do things that way for instance. In my case I shoot extensively with a DSLR and have my photos backed up in at least two locations, sometimes three or four for really important ones. Google's photo management system for its preloaded apps is poor, so I’ll do things better the next time with my next carrier. My texts (which I only discovered I had the option to back up shortly before my phone crashed) are gone. So are my Keep notes as far as I can tell at this point, which had important information.

As far as getting help from Google, I found the answer to my biggest problem through this forum. See the post "Can't send texts (but only to one person)! Others work! by Bwoody3. So even Google (*wink*) wasn’t sure what was going on. By then I had been out of contact for months with those people. Smartphones no longer impress me as much as they do other people. Not everyone wants to tinker with something that doesn’t work right right out of the box. My ideal move is now to get the most basic smartphone available from a new carrier within the next few months. [removed]

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