Google Pixel

I live in Canada, where we are graced with the most expensive cell phone plans in the developed world. One of the "features" of my plan is something they call "Roam Like Home". With this feature, I can use my data and time from my plan just like I haven't gone anywhere, for the low, low price of $15 a day!!!

This is activated automatically the moment that they detect that I am roaming. I cannot opt out of this "feature", and the only way to avoid it is to put the phone in airplane mode and then activate wifi. There is a cap to the number of days you can be charged, but runs on a calendar month basis, so if you are away across the end of the month, you can get charged more than that maximum.

For me, the answer came in the form of eSIMs. I ditched my old Galaxy S9, and bought a Pixel 7 in May. Then I purchased an eSIM for France for both data and talk (30GB for 30 days for around €45) and went to France for 24 days.

I was really pleased with the Pixel 7 in the week or two that I had it before we left on vacation. The battery life was way better than the S9, and 2 hours at the gym, with YouTube Music on Bluetooth and "Strong" running to track sets and timing left me with close to 90% battery left. It would be closer to 50% on the S9.

No heat issues here in Canada.

When the plane landed in France, the eSIM automatically activated, and I turned it on for both data and voice/SMS. Nothing could be easier, and it works like a charm.

At around this time, the issue with hot Pixels started, and eventually Google found the issue with their servers that was causing this. Hot Pixels with short battery life faded from the news.

But not for me.

Ok, so battery life was still better than my old S9, but not by much. And it got hot, too. It seemed to be particularly bad when I set up a hotspot for my wife - as this was the plan, she would use wifi off the Pixel hotspot since her phone doesn't support eSIMs. Out and about, I could expect to lose up to 15% in the first hour, and then it would maybe go even faster after it was down below 70%.

Taking pictures seemed to be especially hard on the battery, too. Not surprising, really, as the new camera features use a lot of computing power. We had Android Auto in our rental car, and Google Maps would drain the battery at almost the same rate that the car would charge it.

I was waiting for the new updates to drop, hoping that might have a fix, but as of June 13, we still haven't seen it. In the meantime, we've returned to Canada and I've turned off the eSIM.

And now the battery life is back to where it was before we left. I haven't once noticed the phone getting hot either.

So there you go. Has anyone else noticed this kind of issue with eSIMs?