That’s okay. You’re not the target demographic of every product.

Pretending you’re in a different country while using streaming services.

Sounds like you need to give it something to connect to. Buy a cheap analog-to Bluetooth transmitter, charge it from the car and just never turn it off. You’d need to do some research to find one which doesn’t go to sleep. If you need to use your phone in the car, just turn the transmitter off.

The quality of AAC depends a lot on the encoder. The iPhone does it pretty well, Android not so much.

That’s what the audio nerds say, at least. Personally I can’t really hear a difference except when using the headphones with the microphone, when it reverts to some ancient codec with more noise than signal.

I coincidentally tried to update yesterday and it said that the November update was the latest one. I don’t know if I just got lucky with the A/B testing or they pulled the update.

I agree Google should fix this, but there is a workaround. You could get a Bluetooth to AUX dongle if this is bothering you. They’re fairly cheap.

It was running on a pretty old engine. It was based on the Quake 1 engine, but some features of the Quake 2 engine got tacked on along the way. There was some more eye candy added as well, but something with that basis isn’t going to be as power hungry as Unreal.

Also, battery life on the 7 series is pretty bad. My old 3a had awesome battery life, but since then Google started making their own SoC. They still use some third-party chips which they don’t control, and it’s affecting power efficiency. I’ve heard rumors that they’re expected to have better control of power consumption around the 9 series.

All that being said, I love my Pixel 7a, but I frequently have to top it off to last me a full day. I can handle that, but if you don’t have access to a charger during the day I’d consider other options.