in the early afternoon i made some indomie mi goreng for lunch with a poached egg.
i checked out the google pixel 7 for the very first time, even though it arrived 2 days ago. judging by how long it took me to finally open the box, you'd think i wasn't excited about getting a new phone. but that's not true. i wasn't so much the phone as i wasn't looking forward to the hassle of migrating all my data from my old pixel 3XL. but i figured i could at the very least play around with the new phone for a bit, before factory reseting it for the actual transfer. the first thing i noticed was the color of the phone, which had this pale green color that made me think it might glow in the dark. i didn't think i'd like it, but the screen is black, so i never see the back of the phone anyway.
out of the box, google didn't provide a charging plug (a new cost saving measure that many other major phone manufacturers are doing as well), but did include an usb-c to usb-c cable, a usb-c to usb-a adapter, and a sim card pin. without turning on the phone just yet, i could tell the 7 was slightly taller and skinnier than my old 3XL. holding it barebones as-is, it had a pretty good width, like i could possibly operate it with just one hand (that might of course change once there's a protective case).
when i finally turned on the 7, it was even more obvious that it was taller and skinnier, but not something i'd notice if i didn't have the two phones side-by-side. both screens are listed as 6.3". because the 7 just had a dot for the forward-facing camera and not a whole notch like the 3XL, there was more screen real estate. the dot is very discreet and i almost don't notice it. the new phone asked me if i wanted to copy over my old data, and i said sure. it then instructed me to use the usb-c to usb-a adapter to connect the two phones together. i'd never done a phone-to-phone transfer like this before. when it asked me to confirm the transfer, i cancelled it because i just wanted to test the phone.
the stock homescreen was pretty basic, a rudimentary set of google apps with a google search bar at the bottom. the pixel 7 had a zippiness to it that i don't have with the 3XL. the under display fingerprint sensor seemed to work well, likewise the face sensing screen unlock.
i wasn't sure how i felt about the camera ridge that sticks out from the back of the phone, but it wasn't too noticeable, and only gave the screen a slight tilt when laid flat. i tested out the two cameras, normal and wide-angle. the wide-angle will be useful for shooting scenic shoots. there was also a digital zoom which looked okay (cropping from the 50MP camera).
after i finished examining the camera, i went into the settings and factory reset the phone. hopefully later tonight i can get around to setting up the new phone.
close to 4pm the rain had stopped. since my parents were going to drop off my 2nd aunt after work, i asked if they could also come and pick me up to go to belmont. i then took a quick trip to star market again to stock up once more on boneless chicken thighs and get some red seedless grapes. i tried one of the grapes when i got back, they're not the same as the super sweet grapes i got from the porter square star market yesterday, these were a little bit sour.
my parents showed up around 4:30pm. there was a pile of deliveries on the doorstep, most of the cardboard boxes soaked from the rain. items included the levoit air purifier, an 8" replacement lid for one of our cafe pots, and a pair of allbird shoes. there wasn't much time to do anything in belmont except to have dinner, which came in the form of cold leftovers from last night paired with warm leftover cafe rice. i ate by myself while my father used the bathroom and my mother was watching her korean drama on the imac in the bedroom. i stayed until 7:30pm before my father gave me a ride back to cambridge.
i was going to take a shower, but i started messing with the new pixel 7 phone again, and ended up spending all evening migrating my data from my old pixel phone. the pixel 7 screen protectors arrived yesterday, and the ZAGG crystal palace clear case ($10) arrived today. i thought it was going to be a soft rubber case, but it was actually quite stiff, with a bit of bend. of all the cases i looked at, this one was the most impressive in terms of specs: 13ft drop protection, D3O crystalex material that's pliable but hardens on impact, antimicrobial agent, 50% recycled tritan content, wireless charging compatible, and they plant a tree with every purchase.
i wanted to put on the tempered glass screen protector before doing the transfer. i did it first with the pixel 3XL, replaced the previous protector that already had several cracks. even though the pixel 3XL would be retired, i wanted it to keep it in good shape. i also replaced the screen protector - from the simple black rubber case to a fabric google-brand case i'd bought earlier but changed out because of the pandemic (thinking the fabric case would be a germ magnet and harder to clean). i'm awful with screen protectors, and i ended up trapping some dust underneath the glass which i had to clean up with the sticky tape but removing the protector but that only introduced more dust. the final result was probably 98% clean, with a tiny amount of trapped air pockets around the edges of the protector.
i had better luck with the pixel 7 phone. even though it too had a few dust particles trapped underneath the glass protector, i managed to squeeze out the air bubbles so i have a near perfect 100% clean coverage. the kit also came with glass protectors for the rear-facing cameras, but instead of clear glass, it was just a solid black protector. i held off on applying the camera protector for the time being.
when it finally came time to do the data transfer, it wasn't nearly as terrible as i feared, a lot of horror stories i read about never happened, migration is such a common procedure these days, they've basically ironed out most of the kinks. the most annoying thing was a lot of apps required accounts, and although google did remember most of my usernames/passwords, but there were a few that i had to track down in order to activate the apps.
initially the homescreen on the pixel 7 looked kind of awful, but that was because it was still downloading all the missing apps from the google store. once it downloaded the nova launcher, it asked me if i wanted to use it as my launcher (yes) and then everything looked like the way i had my homescreen laid out on the pixel 3XL. it was almost disappointing, because it looks very much like my old phone, so it felt like i was still using the old phone. after it finished installing all the missing apps, i had to sideload a few additional apps that i installed manually, like myradar and a patched version of spotify.
i ended up changing the wallpaper just so i could distinguish this new phone from the one phone. the homescreen had the default icons, i purposely didn't migrate any icon packs. the way i had it before on the 3XL, i patched together several icon packs to get the look that i wanted, but to do it over was too much hassle. besides, i sort of want to try out some new icons. i also rearranged the icons a bit, to make room for the google search bar. i ended up fiddling with the phone until 4am.