More Pixels

Someone must have thought, likely with good reason, that more pixels on larger screens is a good idea. Then, someone else must have thought that if it’s a good idea somewhere, it must be a good idea everywhere.

It’s probably for the same reason that I can’t find a new car with tactile switches anymore. Everything’s got touch buttons. In my car, nothing other than the steering wheel has any physical feedback. To check if I’ve successfully changed the A/C mode, I either have to wait until I feel the temperature change or I have to take my eyes off the road. And don’t even get me started on the massive ‘infotainment systems’. I don’t understand how we came to a place where more expensive cars meant fewer physical buttons and huge touchscreens.

I understand why smartphone screens had to grow bigger, though. Smartphones need all your attention and both your thumbs. The quickest way to shackle a hominid is to take away the advantage of the opposable thumb. Even so, said thumbs need to be long enough to caress the large screens effectively (gibbons too have opposable thumbs but theirs are relatively longer than hominids! - quite an untapped market for smartphone companies).

Alas, screens grow faster than thumbs. Silicon outruns sinew. Moore defeats Darwin.

Two years ago I gifted my wife a Google Pixel 4a - one of the last few remaining sub-6-inch phones in the market. Both of us have small hands. My wife loves the phone so much that I end up being the third wheel in their love story.

So when Google decided, after a mysterious software update, that the phone’s battery needed to be replaced, it was a major crisis. She managed for a few days by carrying around a brick made from battery packs, but she couldn’t live like that. It was impossible for her to be more tethered to her phone. To be honest I’m not entirely unsympathetic to “mysterious” device updates. And I understand only too well how disruptive they can be, having written many such software patches myself.

But with this particular phone, we had no idea what we were walking into.

Google’s service centres are - there’s no other word for it - Kafkaesque. You walk into a large, squeaky clean hall. It looks like it’s designed for efficiency. About 30 chairs, neatly laid out in a grid against two service counters. Behind the counters is a small window, only large enough for the technician to occasionally push his head through. Technicians shouldn’t be talking to customers - only the women at the counter are supposed to do that. In a weird way, I understand this too. There’s a reason why we hire customer support executives who shield our product engineers from the wrath of the mob… In any case, if all you have is a small window, a technician’s head is the last thing you want sticking out of it. A number of perverse phrases like “cranial readjustment by decapitation” sprang up as I made mental attempts to write gallows humour.

You take a token and then a seat. An attendant comes along and asks you to scan a QR code. It takes you to a Google form where you write your complaints. I think that’s an exceptionally smart idea. If the first point of contact in a service centre is a human who asks you what’s wrong, you’d drown them in a flood of complaints and shrieks and tears. But if it’s a form, you’d have to calm down first and become incapable of making a scene.

Then you wait for your number to be called. Here begins the unending series of rapid calculations - successive approximations of how long before you get your turn by watching other customers. But by the time you’ve tried to average three numbers in your head, you give up and get busy with Instagram reels.

Eventually, you get your turn. The lady at the counter knows all about your worries - even she looks like she’s not just trained, but designed to be efficient. She then reads you your rights. The phone will undergo an inspection first, during which time you can’t leave the premises (I was dying for a coffee at this time). Then they’ll tell you if a mechanical intervention is required. If it is, then there’s a 5% chance that you’ll lose all the data on your phone, so you better have backed it up. The consultant in me was itching to tell her that instead of saying there’s a “5% chance”, she’s better off saying that one in every twenty phones gets wiped out. I shared this insight with my wife, feeling rather pleased with myself, but one look from her made me shut up and listen on.

The lady at the counter continues by enumerating the conditions under which the service would be free and those under which we’d have to pay. Then she asks with a raised eyebrow, “Do you agree?”

It’s not like I have a choice.

It’s fascinating how well she delivers the script. No ambiguity. No room for error. Always get an acknowledgement. If only everyone spoke this way…

As the diagnostics on the phone began, we went back to our seats. After a while, the technician poked his head out and asked to speak with my wife. This was clearly a bad sign. For one, both he and the lady at the reception seemed annoyed at us for being the kind of customers who make people stick their necks out (of a window which should have only been large enough for a hand). Moreover, it had a “the doctor will see you now” feel - you’ve been waiting for it, but not without foreboding.

He spoke some technobabble about the phone having been tampered with and void warranties - which didn’t help, and only reinforced the stereotype that techies should not talk to users. My wife kept telling him that she had not tampered with the phone, and he kept insisting that she had. I thought to myself that strange as it may seem, both of them could be right at the same time. Customer service teaches you that contradictions don’t exist. Eventually, he’d finished the diagnostics and concluded that the phone was fixable.

An hour later we left the service centre in relief. But something wasn’t right. Something didn’t fit. Something was off about the place. Something which made me feel like I was being taunted.

After hours of fixating on it, I realized what had been bothering me - the service centre had a large TV, with more pixels than I’d seen anywhere - and showed ads of more pixels. Pixel 9s, Pixel watches, Pixel Buds. All in incredible high-res detail and vivid images of young, happy people. All of the products had AI. All of them were smarter than their average user. It was almost like we were the only idiots who made service centres necessary.

Otherwise Google has great products. Sorry about your old Pixel 4a, though. You shouldn’t hold on to it.

What should you do then?

Heed Moore’s Law. Get more Pixels.