I don’t remember a time when we enjoyed a smooth Nexus smartphone release. I was working for a carrier and we had several pre-orders of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, but when it was launched, early versions of Android Ice Cream Sandwich suffered from a volume / GSM bug. The issue was quickly resolved but the early adopters were impacted by this. Later, the problem with the Nexus 4 was getting hold of the stock. And the same with the Nexus 5 come to think of it. With the Google Nexus 6, not only do we have the stock shortage but we now have some bad news: AT&T stores are being instructed to return their initial stock back to base to have it replaced by Motorola in the coming days. And the reason? Defective software, or more specifically, dead on arrival devices. Every cell ‘phone salesperson’s nightmare! The bug only affects the initial shipment of devices but causes the handset to show just a black screen and leaves it useless. The story of dead-on-arrival Nexus 6 smartphones has yet to appear across the Internet or championed from Apple fan sites so this appears to be a limited issue. Of course, if you have upgraded to the Nexus 6 and your device doesn’t work, it goes without saying that you need to return to AT&T to have it replaced.
We understand that Motorola are working to replace these batches with fully working Nexus 6 handsets and it is only the initial shipment of AT&T-branded devices that are affected. Other carrier devices plus AT&T’s demo handsets are not impacted; these will remain in the store. The only impact means that if you were hoping to pick up a Nexus 6 straight from AT&T in the next few days, you’re likely going to be out of luck until the new shipments arrive from Motorola. We know that AT&T will still accept Direct Fulfillment orders, so this option remains available. Best Buy are also selling the AT&T version, so this is another chance to pick one up.
Is there a moral to the store? I’d like to say “don’t fudge software,” keep Nexus devices Nexus-free. The AT&T Nexus 6 comes with added extras bloat and that if the software had not been “improved” with AT&T’s additions, perhaps this might not have happened. It’s only a few days delay, but it’ll feel like a lot longer…