Unplugged Phone Long-Term REVIEW!

Hey everyone, it's Andres and this is my long-term review of the Unplugged phone and I'm breaking it down to two segments because I'm keeping it to the essentials. So in the first segment, I'm going to be going over the hardware and the app experience from the Unplugged suite of apps, what's improved, what's held up and in the second segment, I'll be evaluating the company as a whole because after nearly a year, can we trust them is really what it boils down to. I reviewed this working on Verizon, but ever since the Android 14 update, it hasn't worked on Verizon in terms of phone calls. So we've had an update since then, but it hasn't addressed that. So as of this recording, this device cannot make phone calls on Verizon. I've tried many different ways to troubleshoot this and some tips and tricks that people sent me. It didn't alleviate the problem. If it worked for you, fantastic. It wasn't working for me. So unfortunately I carried this on my person and had to use it off Wi-Fi from my main device. But if I could have, I would have during this long-term review phase. So I want to make that very clear on how I had to approach the long-term review because I don't want to dock it just because it didn't because officially it's not certified by Verizon to be on the network. So I don't want to put blame and fault on Unplugged for this. It's partially Verizon or mostly Verizon actually. So I just want to put that out there. I'm not docking any points or anything about that story, but it is a bummer for those of us on Verizon that want to use this device and can't, but hopefully that's addressed in the next part. Okay, let's talk Unplugged phone. I've been carrying this phone since mid-fall and I've been using it with this transparent hybrid case. It doesn't hide the shimmering back that I do like, but I much prefer the ballistic nylon case that provides more protection, but does end up hiding the actual phone. This one at least gives a cutout for the logo there at the bottom. The back panel is one of my favorite things that has held up very well over time because I was wondering how fingerprints will be reacting to it. And honestly, I've rarely had to clean it. Yes, I do use cases on this device, but I rarely do so because I just love the look and feel of this in the hand. And when you put a case on it like this big, it just adds a lot more girth to it. I've always preferred to not use it whenever I can, but I would advise against it if you want to take care of your device. Secondly has been the performance. The performance has been speedily as the day I unboxed it, and I really appreciate that. And by extension, that also means the battery. Now with the more aggressive auto brightness, it does take a little bit of a hit, but that's come to be expected. You can always turn on battery saver mode to get more out of your battery. Let me tell you what's improved about this device. Android 14 is here. Good on Unplugged for delivering on their promise that they will get this out before the end of 2024. Now, this Android security updates that we have here is October 5th, 2024, which is still relatively recent, but I would like to see a little more improved to be keeping up with the latest Android security updates will definitely provide a lot more peace of mind. The greatest improvement to the device, in my opinion, has been to the suite of apps that Unplugged has on their device from the app logos to the app experiences, particularly with the firmware, the privacy center being the biggest deal, especially because this is their claim to fame. This is the one that's had the most improvements, the most added features, and the cleanest update, in my opinion, because everything is more neatly laid out. More features have been added here. I've already walked through this in the Android 14 updates. You can go check that out. And the feature I'm going to be testing at the end of this video is the self-destruct. We're going to do that together for science, but just everything is more understandable, and it's quickly accessed when you're not there by just pushing the left side button, and you can launch the privacy center on command. Most of the UIs on these apps have been updated to be more modern, to be cleaner, to be consistent with the company logo colors. There are animations when you're booting up and shutting down, when you're wirelessly charging. So there is attention to detail. There's love being shown towards this device. It's not just an afterthought to just throw an OS on there and call it a day. So I have appreciated that attention to detail. It's not all sunshine and roses, though. For the gesture navigation, I had set swipe to invoke assistant. That means a digital assistant. There are different digital assistants that you can use. In this case, if you had Firefox, it'll behave like when you're asking, say, Google, you'd be asking Firefox instead, and your default search engine will be finding those searches for you. But those are internet searches, not actually assistants that can respond to you. Those that can are on the lines of Amazon Alexa or Microsoft's Copilot. I showed the installation of this thing and to be able to map to this. So when you swipe to invoke assistant, you can pull it up. But now you can't because it doesn't show up as any of the apps. I don't know why that is. I don't know whose fault that is. I installed the app through the Unplugged store. I even tried doing so from the Aurora store and I get the same response. I did not activate Amazon Alexa yet, but let's see if it shows up. There it is. So by selecting that, now it becomes my default digital assistant and it should be able to trigger by swiping up. Voila, Amazon Alexa. That's how Microsoft Copilot was supposed to work. So my issue with all this is that you can have your phone experience one way, but an update could break the functionality of said experience. And it can be frustrating if you do not know what the issue is. And in this particular case, I don't see why Copilot stopped being recognized as a digital assistant app. To further my point about the consistency and experience, there was at some point for some reason that a functionality broke between my Galaxy Watch 3 and my Unplugged phone. Really hard to diagnose what the problem was, but after wiping the watch and resetting the watch and deleting the app and restarting the app, I was able to get the connections again and then it worked again. And since then, since that happened, it has been holding a strong connection, but I just found that a little frustrating because whatever happens again. Let me answer you the question. If this device did still work on Verizon, would I be using it as my everyday carry? Yes and no. Of all the Google devices, of all the phones that I do own currently, I keep coming back to this one. I don't know if it's the allure of something different, something new, and the fact that it's privacy focused the way it is in terms of hardware that draws me to it. The feature set that's included there, even though I could get it in other places, it's just something about this having the entire experience built for it. This software was built for this hardware experience. I do like that. The fact that this thing somehow feels more comfortable when I'm typing than say on an S24 Ultra, it makes all the difference for me, which is why I was bummed that I couldn't use it as my everyday carry because I couldn't make phone calls with it. So when I say no to it being my everyday carry, it's basically answering what I want to see in the unplugged phone too. And that has to be IP rated. At this price range, and even a little less, you'll find devices out there that are resistant to water to an extent. And what I could see, maybe this would be asking a little much, this is an AMOLED display. And I have no issues with the full HD plus resolution, but you can make this a 120 refresh rate panel. You open the door to so much more that you can do, such as an always on display with this device. And that'd be really, really awesome. It's along those lines also that let's get the double tap to wake. I thought that would kind of be a standard thing on these devices. I'm always double tapping this device to wake it up and it's not there. I do still feel it could be a software update. I could be wrong, but I hope to see that in unplugged phone too. All right, unplugged the company. How do I evaluate them? For a new company that made major promises with no track record to speak of, I've been very impressed with what they've been able to deliver. At least 90% of the stuff that they said they were going to do, they have done. They said that we're going to redo their entire website, literally responding to my initial video about the unplugged phone, like what is this thing? And they did. They said that we're going to launch a web page just for the unplugged app store for everybody to be able to check out to see if their favorite apps are there. They did that. They said that we're going to release Android 14 before the end of the year. They did that. They said that we're going to have this self-destruct feature on the system wide, not just the unplugged messenger app. And they released that too. The biggest criticism towards unplugged is that while initially they claimed that they were going to be open source, they have not published their source code entirely to the open source repositories. So in the open source community, that's a big red flag. But Iran recently published on the unplugged blog that they're going to be allowing you to unlock the bootloader as they move towards publishing the source code. Even before that, unplugged already allowed cyber security experts to go to their R&D departments to be able to check out their code for themselves. They even invited hackers to try to hack into their code and reward them for having done so and to give them a bonus if they tell them how they did it because they were that focused on keeping things private and secure. One of the biggest podcasts out there, the Sean Ryan show. On his show, he gives out gifts and every now and then he's handing out the unplugged phone. These are high risk individuals that he's interviewing, sometimes out of the country. And to tell you that there's such a demand for this phone outside this country and people are bummed that they can't buy it because not officially available for sale there. It should tell you everything because over here in the American market, a lot of things get muddled because of politics. And I hope that people like I did can look past all the noise and just evaluate this with an objective mind. Because maybe unplugged is answering the question that I have been asking. Are they the next BlackBerry? Let me tell you what I told the executives off the air in early summer. I told them you can do everything right. You can publish your source code tomorrow and you'll still have your critics. It'll never be enough for some people. To me, though, they earned my trust. They've been transparent. They have answered every difficult question. They remain in communication with me. And I appreciate a company that has gone above and beyond in having to respond to a content creator like me. Oh, and one thing about BlackBerry, they were not open source and no one ever complained for them to publish the code to. So while unplugged did earn my trust, like Ronald Reagan says, you got to verify. So I put in the unplugged phone right there. As soon as stuff strikes. That sounds funny. But just in case, look, it's a water over there. You're on. You said it wouldn't. So let's see what happens. Okay, let me get down here. Making sure it's recording. All right. So the way it's supposed to work is that now I have two pin codes to unlock this phone. One is to unlock. The other one is to wipe it. So the code I put is one, two, three, four and five. Not ready to hit it yet, but I'm going to unlock the phone first. So I unlocked the phone just fine with the unlock code. So now I'm going to put the code to wipe it. Okay. All right. One, two, three, four, five. And two fingers. So the phone wiped itself like it said it would. I filmed it on the other camera, so we'll be able to see how long that took. But I should be welcomed by the welcome page. There it is. And that's your demonstration of the self-destruct feature on the unplugged phone. And that's it. That's pretty much my last unplugged phone video. Unless there's some major updates or breaking news, I pretty much have said what I needed to say about unplugged. And it is to that that I want to give a special thank you to all of you. All of you that have allowed me to be your voice, that have trusted me to convey the messages to unplugged and also to unplugged for being forthright with me, to keep an open channel even after all this time. I really have appreciated all of these relationships that I've been able to make with the company, with all of you out there that have messaged me either by DMs on social media, comments on my videos across different video platforms, even on podcast directories. I did feel like I was the lone voice in all this when in the tech sphere with everybody either attacking them or just outright ignoring them. And I couldn't have done it if it wasn't for any of you. So thank you so very much. Okay, hold on. I got interrupted because as I'm working on the unplugged phone long-term review, unplugged announces that they are doing an open beta program for unplugged phone users. So yeah, I joined and I'm currently downloading the software update that includes features that I asked for in the long-term phone review. So I guess that means this is not my last unplugged phone video. I will do another one. And if you want to stay up to date whenever it is that I dropped that video, make sure you like, share, and subscribe. Follow me across the socials for any tidbits and things that I do at the Andres Segovia on x, formerly known as Twitter, underscore Andres Segovia. And man, I'll see you in the next one.