Don’t waste time setting up a smartphone that doesn’t work. A cautionary tale.
After seven or so years of daily use, my Pixel 3a’s battery has pretty badly degraded. A few months, ago, I decided it was finally time to replace it.
As soon as I got the replacement, a Pixel 10, I started setting up apps and messing with settings right away. I figured that until all this setup and transition stuff was complete I would just keep my SIM card in my old Pixel 3a. That way, I’d move from a fully set up Pixel 3a to a fully set up Pixel 10, with no awkward transition in between.
Big mistake. A few days after, I decided it was time to move the SIM card over, and for a few hours, that worked just fine in my Pixel 10. Then I restarted the phone for an update and it couldn’t pick up the network anymore. The phone just would not acknowledge the existence of my carrier’s network. I just spent all this time getting comfortable with this new phone only to realize later that it had a pretty serious problem.
It took a visit to the carrier’s store and a session with Google’s live support to figure this problem out.
If I had moved my SIM card over first thing, I wouldn’t have wasted all that time setting up a faulty phone. I would have noticed the issue right away.
A more fun bonus anecdote!
Framework’s Ethernet expansion card came in handy for setup! Like all Framework expansion cards, it’s just USB-C on the other end. I plugged it into my Pixel 10 to give it a wired network connection for faster and more reliable downloads. That made my second Pixel 10 setup attempt go faster.