In spite of my Google payment problems, my new Pixel 9A arrived late in the day yesterday. Unfortunately, I had a dinner to get to, and some shopping to accomplish, so I didn't get to spend the entire evening with the phone.

However, here are my initial impressions. First, the unboxing experience itself. It doesn't feel nearly as premium as Apple. Instead of the box opening smoothly once I pull on a couple of tabs, getting out the Pixel involved lots of fiddley tearing at tape, mistakenly ripping the cheap cardboard, and squooshing of the box. The USBC wire is also not as nice as the apple one. I'm still upset about not getting a USBC wall plug, but both Apple and Google do that now, so I can't hold it against them. I went and ordered a couple more on Amazon because all of mine are USB A.

Turning the phone on, thankfully, worked the same way it does on Apple devices: hold down the lock button for a bit. I did appreciate the vibrating heartbeat to let me know the phone was ready. However, you get no prompt about how to turn on Talkback. If it wasn't for @JamminJerry@mastodon.stickbear.me over on Mastodon, I would have had to pick up my iPhone and do some googling.

Once Talkback was on, I did enjoy the tutorial. It's much more in depth than anything Apple offers, and the "we explain it, now you try it" model is the best and most well-proven way for blind folks to learn new technology. Unfortunately, it was missing some key information. During setup, Android itself did tell me about the home and app switcher gestures for sighted people. However, they're apparently different for TalkBack, and that info wasn't in the tutorial. Or if it was, it wasn't up front. I admit I was rushing through it a bit, so it's possible I missed a section. They're also not the same as the voiceover gestures. Somehow, I managed to turn on a thing so I have home and overview buttons at the bottom of every screen, just like it used to work the last time I used Android. I don't know how I did that, and it's apparently not the default anymore, but I'm glad of it; as of this moment it's the only way I can go home or switch apps. Yes, the gestures I need are probably listed in TalkBack somewhere. I just haven't had a minute to look.

For the heck of it, I did let it migrate my information from my iPhone. I was a bit worried it was going to delete stuff, or try and move my E-sim over, but it did neither of those things. It did, however, take more than an hour to complete! Yikes! What on earth was it moving? I'm sure I'll discover that in the coming days.

I really don't like the default voice. It sounds so happy and cheerful it's almost condescending. If I had to listen to her before I had any coffee, I'd want to throw the phone across the room. Again, I know I can change this somewhere, I just haven't gotten there yet.

I did, however, manage to sign up for a cheap phone plan and get a low cost e-sim from Public Mobile on the phone without issue. Well, mostly. I had to manually type in the two factor code; I could not convince it to show me the code as an autofill suggestion like Apple does. Annoying!

Everyone complains endlessly about how bad Apple's Siri is. But here's my first interaction with Gemini on android:

Me: open settings

Gemini: I can't open settings.

Huh? What? Why not! I've never, ever had Siri just refuse a basic request like this. Sometimes Siri misunderstands and does the wrong thing, but I've never gotten a straight up refusal for something that should be a basic function. The phone was unlocked...so I dunno.

At first, I was really, really excited about having a fingerprint reader again! While Face ID usually works fine sometimes once in a while, fingerprint unlock was way more accurate for me. Unfortunately, on the Pixel 9A, you just can't feel where the fingerprint reader is at all. So you have to fumble and guess and not hit it quite dead center. This makes it, at least for me, even less accurate than Face unlock. I guess I have that to look forward to when Apple puts in an under-screen fingerprint reader? Sigh. Ironically, it was way quicker and easier for me to train Androids version of Face ID than it was to train my fingerprint. I just kept missing the fingerprint reader!

I did a lot of typing and entering of data on the keyboard as I put in my e-sim. Compared to IOS, it feels mushy and slow. Even the keyboard haptics are too long and overdone, rather than just being a tight tap. It makes the typing experience feel even worse than it is. Also, why aren't comma and period on the symbols keyboard? They're next to the space bar! If God had wanted us to have punctuation on the letters keyboard, he would have put them there in the first place when he created the mobile keyboard for Apple. I can tell I'm going to be constantly infuriated as I use both devices, and my mussel memory gets all mixed up.

The default unlock settings are really, really irritating with TalkBack as well. Pick up your phone? It starts yapping! Touch your fully locked phone, it starts talking! Sneeze near your phone, or just think about it too hard, and it'll start talking. I'm hoping there are some unlock settings I can change to stop the screen from coming on when I just move the phone half an inch.

Also, why doesn't tapping a notification on the lock screen do anything? Why are there no TalkBack actions to clear it? Why doesn't it always read the content of the notification? This default experience isn't as intuitive as Apple.

In conclusion, my day one on Android full time left me feeling confused, overwhelmed, and vaguely frustrated. However, that probably has a lot more to do with me not yet being a TalkBack expert than anything. I think a lot of people go into Android with the idea that moving from VoiceOver on IOS to Talkback on Android is going to be about as similar as moving between NVDA and JAWs. But it's not; it's more like moving between NVDA on Windows and VoiceOver on mac. Yes, you can flick left and right on both. But that's pretty much where the similarities end.

My priorities for today:

  • going through all of the settings and customizing them
  • changing the voice
  • pairing my headset
  • adding all of my various accounts

Will I ever figure out how to go home? Will I slowly get acclimatized to Android? Will I start to actually enjoy using it? Or will I hit some enormous blocker? Find out tomorrow! Or maybe the next day. You know, depending on how life goes.