What It’s Like Travelling With The Pixel 6 Pro 

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And How It Performs…

Pixel 6 Pro
Photo by Amjith S on Unsplash

I live in England, a country where the temperature ranges between 15 to 25°C (59° – 77°F) during the summer. However, in recent years the temperature has risen way above that and this year it hit a new record of 40.2°C (104.36°F). 

You’re probably wondering why I decided to include those figures. Well, they come in handy when I’m talking about using the Pixel 6 Pro in warmer conditions, but there will be more on that coming up later in this article.

This year for our holiday, we decided to travel to the beautiful city of Budapest located in Hungary. 

How the phone performed on the way over

Our journey to Budapest consisted of a 3-hour coach trip to London followed by a 2-and-a-half-hour flight. The entire journey lasted around 13 hours which also included the waiting time for the coach and flight.

I was surprised to find that the Pixel 6 Pro performed very well all the way to our Airbnb in Budapest. I was listening to music throughout the entire coach trip and flight using my now ageing Sony WH-H900N’s, which by the way are still a great pair of active noise-cancelling (ANC) headphones.

As I had my coach ticket and boarding pass on my phone, I was concerned that the battery would run low, so I set the phone to power-saving mode for the entire duration of the journey. However, I’m not sure whether it was needed as the battery lasted all the way to my Airbnb. 

Throughout the journey, I was also taking photos browsing Twitter and even watching YouTube videos, but when I got to the hotel room, the phone was still showing just under 40% which I thought was brilliant.

In terms of the tickets and boarding passes, I was sad to find out that neither National Express nor British Airways support the Google Wallet app (Previously Google Pay). I had to show my boarding pass using the British Airways app and I had to either show the National Express app or download a wallet app called PassWallet.

Overall, I was very happy with the phone on the journey over and I couldn’t expect more of it.

How does the phone perform in a warmer climate?

During my stay, the weather ranged from 32 to 36°C or 89.6 to 96.8°F which is much warmer than what I’m used to and so is the phone by the looks of it.

One of the first things I noticed about my Pixel 6 Pro is that it gets very warm whilst in my pocket and I tried taking it out of my case, which by the way is the original Pixel 6 Pro case in Carbon

Taking the case off is the least of my worries as I started getting notifications stating that the phone is getting too warm on one occasion the phone completely froze and shut down and the power button wasn’t responding even after a 5-minute break. 

This proved to be very inconvenient as at the time I was waiting for the tram and my ticket was on the BudapestGo app, which on a side note I highly recommend if you’re planning to visit. I decided to buy a 15-day pass as it was cheap enough and it provided me with unlimited travel on the city bus, tram and underground services. 

There were times when I wanted to record videos in 4K, unfortunately the phone just didn’t allow me to as it was too warm, that’s what the notification said anyway, luckily enough I was able to record in Full-HD. Photos weren’t a problem either, the camera proved to be absolutely amazing!

Now if we combine this with the way the iPhone 13 performed, it proved not to have any of these problems which to me is a real disappointment particularity as the Pixel 6 Pro is Google’s flagship phone.

How did the phone perform in general?

In general the phone performed okay, there was nothing too special about it. The battery lasted around a day of me using the camera app for taking photos, BudapestGo for public transport and a huge amount of Google Maps.

One thing I have noticed was that it seemed to be constantly losing GPS signal, it’s either that or the app just wasn’t working as it should. There were a few occasions where I was following a route but then all of a sudden it told me that I was going the wrong way and that I had to go back to go another way which I didn’t initially tell me.

I also found that it doesn’t cope well with places being on different street levels. For example, I was following directions to a shopping centre which included getting an underground train, Google Maps lead me to approximately where the train stops above ground instead of the station. I ended up walking around confused for a good ten minutes before I realised what has happened and a very kind local pointed me in the right direction as the station was quite far from where I was lead to.

In terms of signal, I was disappointed to only be provided with 4G even though you can easily get 5G on most networks here in Budapest. It could be because my network which happens to be EE doesn’t offer 5G roaming, not sure on that one, maybe someone can explain in the comments? 

I also found myself limited to one network which happened to be Yettel. Not sure if the network is any good or not? Maybe someone who lives in Hungary can confirm?

Because I’m on EE, I also ended up spending £10 on a Roam abroad pass which allowed me to use my allowances just like I could at home. I found this very frustrating as networks such as o2 offer this for free!

In terms of the battery life, the battery performed as expected and I was able to get around a day out of it. But just to be on the safe side, I did carry a power bank with me at all times. 

For those of you who are new to Tech With Dom, I’m a huge fan of power banks by Green Cell because not only do they offer quality, durability and performance. It’s also a brand I have been using for several years for aftermarket laptop battery replacements. 

I currently use the Green Cell PowerPlay 20 which provides me with 2 USB-A ports and a USB-C port for charging. It also offers a 200000mAh which is perfect for charging multiple devices on the go including the Pixel 6 Pro with around 2 full charges. Check out my video review below…

In Summary

It breaks my heart saying this, but overall the Pixel 6 Pro performed well below my expectations for a flagship phone. Not only was it not usable at times but it also got extremely warm which worried me. I mean the last thing I want is for it to burst into flames in my pocket.

Due to the fact that the iPhone 13 performed very well, I find myself in a difficult situation because I’m a huge Pixel fan and have been since the very first Pixel release, but at the same time I expect to be paying for a phone that works and doesn’t overheat whilst idle. 

Now I’m not sure if this problem relates to my Pixel 6 Pro in particular but I have found that others are experiencing similar issues.

There is an advisory on the Google Community Forum about what to do when your Pixel phone starts overheating during summer temperatures. You can read it here…