luke loves his pixel xl but the issue with the original pixel for me was that
while i did end up using it for a couple of months it was a bit of a one-trick
pony an expensive one at that and a good
camera or even a great camera is not enough for me
i need a phone that knows what i want a
phone that shares my interests a phone that i can't wait to greet at
the end of the day with a great big hug
or failing that a little squeeze
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yeah yeah
in some ways google launched two different sizes of the same phone both
the pixel 2 and the pixel 2 xl feature
basically the same internal specs with the main difference being the amped up
battery on the larger model to power the larger screen
and i was both surprised and pleased to find out during the october 4th event
that both phones even get the same optical and electronic image
stabilization and portrait mode camera features a move that is much appreciated
by those of us with both small hands and precious moments to capture
but pretty much any flagship Android phone
these days has the same internal specs including the galaxy s8 that launched
six months ago so we have to look a little closer
to see that while they are clearly related
they are also as different as i am from my siblings
they both still sport a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor
satisfyingly clicky lock buttons a 12.2 megapixel single rear camera and the
partial glass-backed design that debuted on the original pixel but is somehow
much more refined looking this time around but then
when we flip them over they're like
nothing alike it's almost like they were made by
completely different contract manufacturers with different
capabilities so the pixel 2
is lightweight with squared off edges making it easy to handle but a little
chunky looking with larger top and bottom bezels to make room for stereo
speakers and i guess the rest of the basically no compromises internals
the xl by contrast is the far more
2017 looking of the two devices
little changes like the seamless transition from the body to the sexier
curved glass and wider gamut not to
mention much higher resolution display
wouldn't really bother me as a pixel 2 buyer but the taller aspect ratio of the
display makes the handling of the devices
very different in day-to-day use the pixel puts less strain on your
thumbs to reach the spacebar while you're typing while the xl uses its
extra screen height to compensate for the space lost to the on-screen buttons
by comparison it also fits a lot more
content on the screen at a time though it should be noted that both of
them lose out to the galaxy s8 and the note 8 in this regard
and this affects media playback in a big way too if you're a movie watcher
buy the xl2 period
surprisingly they both managed to pack similar and impressive sounding stereo
front-facing speakers like seriously htc
boom sound lovers y'all got something to upgrade to
finally but while six inch versus five inch doesn't
sound like that big of a deal the pixel wastes
far more of its screen real estate in ultra wide content so think about how
much bigger a 50-inch tv looks compared to a 40-inch tv
that is the difference on to day-to-day usability uh once i
added a specifically compatible well
thankfully inexpensive type c to three and a half millimeter adapter to my
headphone pouch the pixel 2 and the 2xl
are they're just a pleasure to use gone is the stress about incidental
water splashes from last gen and i gotta
say while i had no pressing desire for a
squeezable phone how tall is Linus sebastian i really like it as a super
natural way to bring up the google assistant to the point where i even
found myself just using the google assistant a lot more
than i have in the past now you'll hit it by accident a fair bit
at first just trying to pick your phone up off the table or put it into your
pocket but the sensitivity has a wide
adjustment range so if you're not the kind of person whose
voice saying okay google would take about three minutes to capture and steal
okay google ok google ok google and
you're comfortable with the reduced security of a voice recognition unlock
man there are a lot of fast ways to get things done ok google assuming of course
that what you want to get done isn't that complicated
the thing for me is that the more that these digital
assistants can do the more obvious it becomes what they cannot do
so i can open google docs handy
but i can't then open a specific document or start dictating without
touching my phone i can search for drive badminton center
and i can navigate there but then i can't add a stop at an amw on
my way without touching my phone while i'm in the car
and it's stuff like this that makes the whole exercise feel
a little pointless i mean no not not pointless that's not
fair but but definitely incomplete i mean i can see how folks
who just want to perform discreet singular tasks like turn off the light
or play that song that i like would be really happy with the current state of
things but for some reason a lot of what
i end up wanting to do is going to result in me entering it manually at
some point anyway and if that's the case it's usually faster to just do it myself
correctly the first time rather than relying on what is much better but still
imperfect voice recognition a perfect example is that it recorded
this as in perfect instead of imperfect
and the screen turned off while i was finishing the recording because i've
been talking for a minute psy
and of course i meant phi not that sigh
the good news is that even if you don't give a crap about google assistant
Android oreo has plenty to love in no particular order here are a few things
that made my life better versus the iphone 8 and the galaxy s8 upcoming
events at the top of the home screen super nice to have
holding task switcher to run multiple apps on screen doesn't work with netflix
boo but with supported apps it's faster
smoother and more intuitive for multitaskers than ever before
being able to snooze notifications is a
godsend for busy people like me so finally there is a middle ground between
dismissing them and forgetting about them and having them just pile up and
better management of background app power usage makes the pixel 2 behave
very nicely for a phone with only a 2700
milliamp hour battery i have gripe still though google allows
bootloader unlocking but i shouldn't need to load a custom rom to
do something as simple as swapping the on-screen nav buttons and this
suggestion that i found on reddit was even more annoying than reaching all the
way over for back and while we're at it i capture mark up
and send out a lot of screenshots and stock Android screenshot management
sucks compared to iOS 11 and third-party
variants of Android bringing us to
the camera even though it lacks a few shooting modes compared to its competitors like
60 FPS 4k or ultra high frame rate slo-mo it's
great but oh don't take my word for it
here's our resident camera guru brandon to tell you guys how the front-facing
camera is okay if you turn off the tier facial processing and the back shooter
is great and you're gonna love it the front-facing camera is okay
if you turn off the face retouching and the rear camera is
great that's it
i mean could you do a follow-up video next week maybe comparing the pixel 2 to
the iphone 8 and the note 8 or something i guess
okay well great then so
bottom line should you buy
it's actually kind of hard to evaluate especially the pixel 2 xl
in the absence of its true competitor the iphone 10 but
squeeze changed the game a lot more for me than i thought even if almost
everything else about it especially the absence of wireless charging still feels
like the nexus to pixel price hike was a
bit of a kick in the balls so i like the design much better than the
super boring iphone 8 but iOS 11 and 3d
touch are great so is face id better than squeeze and
google assistant how about the camera on the 10. these are all questions that
need answers unless of course you're a die-hard
Android user and you were never going to consider the dark side anyway so for you
guys the pixel 2 xl gets a strong recommendation with the two just behind
it due to its fat bezeled and last gen 16x9 screen so
yeah you probably already knew this but these are the Android phones to have
right now assuming of course that you're a great
big baller
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