Forum Discussion
Past 14 day mark to return Phone and am now seemingly stuck with it
On June 16th I went to the tmobile store in Heath Ohio and got a new phone, a Pixel 8a to replace my One+ 9 as its end of updates life arrived. I settled on a Pixel 8a.
After a few days of using it I began to dislike it. Bloated, ad heavy, and just really annoying things like one by one dinging me about the apps on the phone and would I like to use one now?! I had turned off all tutorials, mesaages and such in the settings but seemingly there are hidden settings that cannot be turned off.
When I next went into town, I went to the tmobile store and was told its was too late to return it to the store and that I would have to call 611 and set up the return that way. I did so tonight and was told again about the 14 day return period being over. Seeing that I was going to get no where with the stick-to-the-script guy I said somethng like I will root it and flash a more useful rom to it and told him nighty night.
The SIM is back in the One+ and the Pixel and everything it came with is in its little box. Reset to Default.
I have been with T-Mobile for a good number of years and would have expected to be able to return an item that I have yet to even be billed for. That starts next month.
Pixel devices usually do not come bloated or with ads. Is there an app on this device potentially causing the issue? You do not need to root a device to gain access to most of it's restricted settings. Personally, as someone who used to always root my devices back in the earlier days of Android. It is not necessary to do so in today's world and doing so can cause a lot of banking and other secure apps to not work, which further takes you down the rabbithole of trying to hide root from those apps.
If you are unhappy with the device currently. I would suggest requesting a peanent SIM unlock on it and once that is done. You can choose to sell the device to get yourself something you would prefer or you can look at installing a custom fiware and OS, like Graphene, to give you a bloatfree and privacy focused version of Android that is based on stoc k alAndroid and has excellent support.
