I’d been using the official Live Case from Google on my Nexus 6P the whole time, and honestly I was pretty happy with it — except it was sometimes slippery as a bar of soap. The Live Case has its shortcomings, though: the top and bottom aren’t protected. If you, like me, sometimes shove the phone into the car’s phone slot, you’ll find out where the problem is — the edges get dinged up easily. So I decided to swap cases, but I didn’t know what to get. Then I saw people on XDA recommending this thing… They call it a Bumper.

Bought a Nexus 5X to use as a car navigation unit. Plugged it into the car charger’s USB port and… there’s the problem. I’m not even asking for “charging rapidly,” but you’ve decided to be “charging slowly”… Thinking it over, it’s simple enough. The car charger I had was a gift. Figured I’d buy a proper one. Since the fast charging supported by the Nexus 6P / Nexus 5X / Pixel C is the 5V / 3A standard and not Qualcomm’s, there’s currently no car charger head that fully hits that spec, so I settled for an Anker 5V / 2.4A one.

I’ve got a fair number of digital devices on hand, and the biggest headache after buying them is buying accessories for them… screen protectors, cases, and all sorts of add-ons. I’ve wasted quite a bit of money on this front over time, so let me briefly go over what I’ve picked up recently and share a few lessons along the way.

Things have been tight lately for reasons, so I’ll keep this short and to the point about the Nexus 5X.

I sold my year-old Google Nexus 9 and, as a replacement, imported the latest Google Pixel C. The reason was honestly that I wasn’t all that satisfied with the Nexus 9—screen too small… build quality so-so… maybe that was it. More than that, though, I think the Pixel C just appealed to me more. The import went smoothly, but Google still shipped the keyboard and the tablet separately, which meant I had to deal with two forwarding orders. The keyboard ended up getting taxed too. I don’t think it should have been, but the forwarding company declared it proactively. They had a tax receipt, so I let it go. I’ve used the Google Pixel C for a fair amount of time—not short, but not long either. I’ve honestly written quite a bit on it: reports, and every blog post from the last one of last year up to now. I figure that gives me the right to have an opinion on this thing.

Recently I picked up two things: a USB fast-charging adapter for the Nexus 6P that I plan to use at work, and a Bluetooth module for my desktop. The Bluetooth module is straightforward. Usually you plug in a USB one and the system just recognizes it, especially since my desktop runs Linux — even more likely to work out of the box. But that was too easy. I could’ve just bought any random one, but I always want something fancier, so I got a Dell Bluetooth dongle that supposedly supports entering the BIOS. Of course, that BIOS trick only works with a Dell Bluetooth keyboard. The Dell Bluetooth keyboard works fine with this dongle, but plug the thing into a desktop and it isn’t recognized… and that’s not all — it doesn’t work under Windows 10 either.

After getting the Nexus 6 last year, some things satisfied me and some didn’t, so when the Nexus 6P launched this year I kept hesitating about whether to upgrade. The things I wasn’t happy with: The screen was too yellow. It’s an AMOLED panel, and supposedly not even a good Samsung one, which is why it took me forever to adjust after switching from a Sony Xperia Z1. Battery life was a bit of a mess. With the Moto 360 sipping power over Bluetooth, I barely got through a day, and sometimes had to top up around noon. No LED notification light. The Nexus 6 actually has one, but Android disables it by default, and even if you turn it on you apparently need a paid app to make it work. Ridiculous. The biggest thing making me hesitate was this: the Nexus 6P does fix those complaints, but not in a way that leaves you feeling reassured.

I bought the Nexus 6 the same way I bought the Nexus 9 last time — same channel, arrived at almost the same time too. There’s already plenty of info about this phone online, but I’ll still keep it brief.