Got mine today. I got gray and thought the color was a little more gray/green with a gold/champagne color accent. It’s actually flat gray with a silver accent. Not a big deal, but probably would have chosen white had I seen it in person first.
Haven’t really had much time to play with it, but I did use the new auto macro mode to take a picture of my watch. I was highly impressed, much better than the 6 pro for macros. The other normal shots seemed to look a bit better too. Everything feels smoother, snappier and the 6 doesn’t feel slow even a year later so…so far so good.
This might belong in its own whinging-about-Taiwanese-banks thread, but I just checked my CTBC account while reinstalling apps on the new phone…and noticed I’ve been charged a 1.5% foreign transaction fee for ordering from the Taiwan Google Store:
I find that…a bit fucking steep. The order was denominated in TWD, of course, and from the Taiwan Google Store. How is that a foreign transaction?
Is this normal here, or something unique to CTBC or the Google Store? It didn’t even occur to me to think much about which account to use, but it looks like it would have been cheaper/essentially free to use one of my UK cards (which I actually withdrew from to put money in my CTBC account to buy the phone).
I don’t pay much with cards here, but now I remember being charged similar fees (but for much smaller transactions) when occasionally ordering stuff from Steam.
My first impression of the Pixel 7 is…that I feel a bit robbed!
I just chatted with the Google Store, who said the charge wasn’t them (obviously not) and that from their side they only charged exactly NT$19,791 in TWD.
Then called CTBC and luckily got through to a very patient lady with good English, who said that the Taiwan Google Store is still a foreign company not a Taiwanese company and that according to their system it was debited from the Netherlands so still counts as a foreign transaction despite being in TWD.
She initially said something about it not really being debited in TWD but rather another currency, which didn’t make sense to me (because you’d expect some difference between the invoiced amount and the settled amount several days later) so we went back and forth on the logic of that for a bit. Then she said the fee was really charged by Visa not CTBC (that probably isn’t wholly untrue, but AFAIK most banks in normal, non-financial-hub countries would cover those fees so the customer only pays the amount they, you know, paid). Even paying in TWD, I’m quite sure it would have been cheaper to use any of several other debit/credit cards I have rather than bothering with the Taiwanese card.
She said I wasn’t the first person to complain about this. Still feel a bit robbed. Good to know about this anti-cashback scheme that Taiwanese banks offer anyway.
A very similar things happened to me early summer when I purchased a Japan Airlines ticket, from their Taiwan site, billed in NTD—and I was dinged with an international transaction surcharge after using a Taiwan credit card! I was not at all happy, and went back and forth with JAL about this through email, with JAL simply saying: this is a matter between you and your credit card company.
I also felt robbed. This doesn’t feel reasonable at all.
Yeah, and I actually had to go to the ATM in the rain last weekend to withdraw the money from the UK account and deposit it in the CTBC account because I thought it would be better to use a local card for the payment…
I’ve just noticed that my phone doesn’t charge when I connect it via a USB-A to USB-C cable, but it does charge when I connect it via a USB-C to USB-C cable. Plugging it in with the first kind of cable does absolutely nothing - the device doesn’t register that anything has been connected.
The problem isn’t the cable (I’ve tried two USB-A to USB-C cables, both working), and it isn’t the charger (I’ve tried two wall chargers and one power bank, all working).
I don’t see why this would happen - surely the connection at the wall end shouldn’t make that much difference?
I’m not sure if there’s some issue with how the device is recognizing USB connections (I did mess around with the settings a couple of days ago while connecting it to my PC to transfer files, but I think I’ve reverted them to default now), but again I don’t see why the wall connection would matter.
I should also note - damn it, second time I’ve done this with a phone less than one week old - that the phone fell 1.5 feet or so from my bed onto my tiled floor last night, apparently landing on the bottom corner to the left of the charging port (judging from a small chip in the paint/coating). It wasn’t a big fall, but it wasn’t wearing a case because the ones I ordered haven’t arrived from Shopee yet. I’m not sure if that might have damaged something.
I don’t remember whether I tried charging it via USB-A to USB-C prior to today. Maybe someone with a Pixel and spare cables sitting around could see if they have the same issue?
Oh, I bought a Xiaomi one (which works) at the same time as the phone because I didn’t have any USB-C chargers and it was like half the price of the Google one:
I’m just surprised it doesn’t also charge using a USB-A to USB-C cable. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s slightly inconvenient, and I’m wondering if I’ve broken my phone already.
Like you point out, it seems that other people have also reported this issue.
Hi everyone. Do you guys know where to buy pixel 7 physically in Taipei? I’m not sure about ordering from google store or pchome since I’m a student living in a small apartment in New Taipei with no receptionist. Also, my Chinese is terrible, and I’m sure it will be hard to communicate with the mailman when he calls me to deliver.
I was able to charge my pixel 7 using the official Google USB A to USB C cable. Also tried it with a cable from an Akaso Brave 7 Action camera and it also worked. Although the USB A charging brick I have is low power one. So no fast charging.
Another thing I noticed after that post is that if I try charging it with the USB-A to USB-C cable while the phone is switched off, the phone screen displays a battery icon with a question mark in it, which indicates that the phone is at least detecting the USB connection even though it’s refusing to charge. Didn’t have much time to look into it after that though, and just stuck with using the USB-C to USB-C cable.
The order was denominated in TWD, of course, and from the Taiwan Google Store. How is that a foreign transaction?
