Rita El Khoury

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About Rita El Khoury

Rita is a Senior Features Editor at Android Police. Her love story with Android started in 2010 and has been going stronger with every update, device, tip, app, and game. She's a huge Pixel fan and has spent an inordinate amount of time using and testing Google's ecosystem, apps, and services.

She lives in France, speaks more than three languages, follows Real Madrid, and spends any free time she has traveling. Once upon a time, she was a pharmacist as well.

What was your first phone and what do you remember about it?

My first phone was a 2002 Nokia 6610, running Series 40, with a whopping 1.5-inch display, a T9 keypad, and 4MB of storage. It had no camera, no GPS, no Bluetooth, and charged over a proprietary port. But it ran Java apps, so I remember finding a few interesting games and apps, unpackaging them because I hated their icons, replacing those with better icons, then spending very long minutes transferring them over Infrared from my PC to the phone.

My first foray in Android was the 2010 Samsung Galaxy 5 — no, not S, but 5. It was tiny, it ran Android 2.1 Eclair, and it was so infuriatingly slow. I had bought it as a cheap way to test the Android waters before jumping ships from Symbian, and it served its purpose. The Android Market and all the customizations won me over, so it only lasted a couple of months in my pocket before I jumped to an HTC Desire Z.

How long have you been interested in technology?

I wasn't brought up around technology and my first dabbles in front of a computer around the late 1990s were terrifying and nerve-racking.

When I bought my first PC in 1999, I sat in front of it for hours just repeating the few things I was taught at school. Opening a Word document, writing some words, using the file explorer. I was afraid I would break something. Bit by bit, though, I gained confidence. I started clicking buttons I'd never been taught about, discovering what they did, and learning the power of Undo.

Technology became less intimaditing then. I bought apps and games on CDs and installed them, discovered the Internet, started using search to find more information, reading everything I could read, and trying things on my own PC.

From then on, technology and I became buddies, and my interest only grew when I realized I could use it on the small phone that I carry in my pocket instead of having to carry an entire laptop with me.

What tech products or categories are you most passionate about?

I've been a Google Pixel user since the Pixel 2XL was launched in 2017. I've had every Pixel model except the 3 series, and I love their interface, all of Google's special little features, and the camera experience.

Since I travel a lot and don't like carrying my mirrorless cam with me, having a trusty camera in my pocket is essential, and every year, I take 3,000+ photos with my Pixel phone. What fascinates me is that even shots I took in 2017 still get "Wow, that's good! What phone did you take it with?" comments to this very day.

Because of this, I'm entrenched in Google's ecosystem. Pixel Buds, Pixel Tablet, Pixel Watch, Google TV Streamer, Google Home Speaker — you name it, I have it and use it.

Stepping outside of this, I'm a big smart home nerd and I run my own Home Assistant server with over 100 smart devices across my home. Ask me about smart locks, lights, or shutters and I might never shut up.

I've also loved wearables since the early Android Wear days and the LG G Watch. My current favorite is the Oura Ring besides, well, the Pixel Watch 4.