Sunday, January 20, 2013

Screw It

As the post title says.

Google has sent me three Nexus 4 phones, and all three have had crippling wifi and bluetooth issues.

If you're interested, you can check out the previous post for the time frame that this fiasco evolved over, and if you're really a glutton for punishment, you can read all thirteen (13!) previous posts that detailed the sad experience the Nexus 4 has become.

The tipping point came today when I made one last call to Google's device support number, 1-855-836-3987, in a final attempt to get someone to tell me when the problems with the Nexus 4 wifi and bluetooth would be fixed.

No one knew, of course, so I'm sending this last one back and getting my account credited for the $349 price of the 16GB Nexus 4.

It is telling, on several levels, that the wifi and bluetooth problems with Android 4.2.1 and the N4 have been known for quite some time.  On November 20th, this Google code forum was started to track the wifi problem. At the time of this writing there are 635 complaints in that forum, and the Google developers have yet to announce that they have identified what the problem is and are working on a fix.

Or, perhaps they've identified the problem and have determined that it can't be fixed.  This would be consistent with rumors that the phone's manufacturer, LG, has halted production of the Nexus 4 in order to gear up to produce its "next-generation smartphones", whatever those happen to be.

In any event, I'm happy to send my third Nexus 4 back. It's a lemon, just like the previous two.

I'll keep an eye on things to see if Google eventually gets it right, at which time I'd consider taking another look at the Nexus 4, because if the phone had worked, it would have been pretty cool. But it didn't. So it's not.

And Google; well, their customer support operation could use a little fine tuning as well.  The morbidly curious are welcome to peruse the previous thirteen posts for hints at where some room for improvement exists there.

--Doug
doug@parrot-farm.net


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