That Time @Xtramoney Put His Phone in a Lake

You may have read the last installment in our Stuff @Xtramoney Does to His Pixel series, in which @Xtramoney (whose mother actually named him Mark) and I relied on the Google Maps location-sharing feature to real-time track his phone around Manhattan after he left it in the back of a cab.  The story ended happily; Mark got his phone back and a special taxi driver got a very large tip.

So this weekend Mark and I go to a lake house with one of our friends, @icreatelife_ (known as Kristina to people who don’t have Instagram).  

We are having a wonderful day at the lake, with Mark snapping pics the entire time on his phone.  

​We play bocce ball while drinking adult beverages, float in the water while drinking adult beverages, and cruise around in a motor boat while drinking adult beverages.    ​

---

By the by, I forgot to mention all of the people survived.

On an unrelated note, Kristina (who has never engaged in water sports before) agrees to let us to pull her around the lake at high speeds with a jet ski while she hangs onto a tube attached with a rope.  Mark weighs his options and decides the responsible thing to do would be to sit backwards on the jet ski behind the driver, facing Kristina, so he can take video of whatever unfolds while also not being impeded by anything to hold onto.  

This is where the accounts begin to differ, but everyone agrees that somehow the jet ski managed to flip completely upside down and that everyone enjoyed a surprise swim.  Mark amazingly managed to hold onto his phone throughout the debacle, but it definitely spent some time underwater.  I am not sure what the official marketing claims are, but we can tell you that this particular Pixel was not waterproof.  It took a few hours for us to pull the plug and call time of death, but it definitely done died.

Mark and I are Google Ambassadors, so after a sheepish email to our dear friends at the Googleplex, they generously overnighted him a new device.

One thing that was really nice was that Mark lost very, very little pictures or data.  He had the phone set to automatically backup and sync.  When he signed into his Gmail account on a new phone, his familiar wallpaper popped up and all his apps started downloading.  When he checked his photos and videos, the only ones that were missing were the ones taken post extreme jet skiing, which we thought all in all was pretty fair.

That's all for this review.  We look forward to bringing you more discoveries about useful Google phone features next time @xtramoney subjects his Pixel to abuse.     

---