my first impressions of the pixel 3 xl were excellent the above average haptics
really make it stand out among other Android devices
then things immediately took a turn for the worse when i missed a handful of
critical google hangouts messages a fresh format without using the
transfer cable did get that resolved and so i spent my last couple of weeks
mostly enjoying my time with google's latest and greatest flagship
that is until today when i ran into a new deal breaker software bug which is
not being able to log into my gmail account no matter how many times i enter
the password and the authentication code
so i guess we'll just get the review done so i can switch back to my other phone whether you're migrating 500
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the most obvious change to google's stock Android experience is the
on-screen navigation buttons and they're kind of the worst of both worlds unlike
apple's gestures they take up valuable screen real estate along the bottom of
the phone and unlike other Android software buttons they are not
reconfigurable with the back button stuck way over on the left out of sheer
pigheadedness as far as i can tell they have their strengths
as long as you don't need to go too far back into your recents the slide is
super fast and intuitive and if you don't like that feature you can slide up
once for a more traditional recents and some suggested apps it's really cool
that this works from anywhere now not just the home screen but there's room
for improvement here too as it is it requires a second swipe to reach the app
tray how about just one really hard swipe and then it could carry through
with momentum i would like that a lot the other big change that bothered me
more than i expected is the inability to execute google assistant functions that
used to work while the phone was locked like bringing up your shopping list or
reminders things you can only do now if you have google's special pixel stand
wireless charger i get that there are privacy concerns around voice print
authentication especially for people like me but this limitation negated a
lot of the usefulness of squeezing to bring up the google assistant i mean if
i have to shift my grip on the phone to touch the rear fingerprint sensor anyway
then why wouldn't i just do that in the first place i used the squeeze a fair
bit on the pixel 2 xl and then on this one i basically just used it as a
flashlight toggle and here come the rest of my gripes
about google assistant i ran into this bizarre bug a handful of times with it
not registering my internet connection when i clearly had one google continues
to advertise natural interaction with the assistant as a selling point when my
experience is still that you basically have to read the correct syntax manual
to get anything useful done it's still
somehow doesn't convert my to you when
it creates tasks and the handling of reminder notifications is
awful if you have more than one set up your
phone just buzzes and the card doesn't
move to the top or break out the most recent one or do anything useful to draw
your attention and it's pretty easy to have more than one when you're a
complete scatter brain like me and sometimes i'll even have recurring ones
like taking out the garbage cluttering up the list now it's mostly fine as a
voice dictation program my issue here is the branding if i had a real life
assistant and they were this inconsistent they would be fired it is not a time
saver if i have to issue the command twice and then look at my screen to
double check that my reminder actually says something coherent
what was it
i guess i'll never know so i guess it just baffles me that google is building
ai robots to make calls for me and reschedule my appointments when they
still can't figure out the basics i asked my assistant to remind me to do
something tomorrow when i get to work and it set a reminder for 8 am the next
day well before i even arrive at work without prompting me if i want to make
any changes now that behavior has been fixed that
was right at the beginning when i got it but it still doesn't work the way i'd
expect it asks me what time then when i say
when i get to work ya dunce it navigates me there
who would want that so you've probably noticed by this point that i haven't
talked much about the hardware that's for good reason aside from the pixel 3
being very compact for a 2018 flagship neither it nor its excel sized cousin
really tries to differentiate based on the hardware there are a couple of
standout features like ip68 water resistance 100 dc ip3 color space
coverage and stereo front facing speakers but there's no micro sd slot no
full screen notchless design no massive battery no headphone jack no weird
holographic display or stylus that doubles as a remote control or 10 gigs
of RAM option or whatever and that's
okay it just means that the software
experience needs to be amazing not
fine i guess why is oneplus overall system
responsiveness better than google's own why are google's software engineers busy
keeping track of health and wellness screen time crap instead of building
core functionality like screen recording
why now that facial unlocking has been removed is there no way to unlock this
device without either picking it up off my wireless charger or poking a pin code
into it like some kind of caveman and how is it that google's own apps look
ridiculous with like cut off text with their gargantuan notch and that's even
ignoring the stuff that they seem to be consciously screwing up display profiles
have stupid names like adaptive boosted
and natural instead of just listing the white point and color space and the
audio controls are significantly worse
than oreo so there's this clever little gesture
where you can press your volume up and your lock button in order to
mute your phone neat but then there's no toggle functionality
when you hit it again also whose genius idea i would genuinely like
to talk to this person was it to change the default volume rocker behavior
to media instead of ringtone volume when you're not doing anything and finally
this is by far my favorite one they've bungled up one of my favorite features
the ability to quickly adjust any volume slider without stopping what you're
doing and opening the settings app like you're on a freaking iphone
why also i know i mentioned this already but
we're really getting to the point where it's not funny or endearing anymore that
google by default doesn't allow you to move the back button to the right side
like this is getting ridiculous you don't even have another button there
anymore now for all i know this next one is
lastpass's problem not google's but lastpass integration has gotten
continually worse on Android over the last couple of years with the most
irritating issue for me being that it used to work when you were signing into
google accounts and now it doesn't google now has their own service for
this coincidence perhaps or maybe they're pushing
competitors out either way shockingly
apple finally allows third-party password managers with face id now
apple's implementation isn't perfect but it is so much better i don't want to use
first party utilities for this kind of functionality i want something that
works on my Android phone on my iphone and on my desktop for that matter
and before we get into good stuff i'm gonna close this segment out with one
petty gripe i hate that it's an extra click from the
notification pull down now to access my settings
i haven't had to have a settings icon on my home screen on Android for a long
time but i guess that's just still more iphone crap that we get to go back to
now maybe i'm just a freak but i don't like desktop clutter everything here has
a purpose and i access the settings menu a fair bit
that last thing though is more than offset by my first good feature actually
this is awesome the ability to review and delete voicemails without dialing
into your voicemail i hate voicemail i actually plan to turn mine off at some
point but i just haven't gotten around to it because it's managed through the company and blah blah blah so on my
other phones i always have this stupid notification that can't be dismissed
this is much better i also absolutely love that i can interact with
notifications on the always-on display that was a great feature on the droid
turbo and one that i've been missing ever since i got rid of that phone so a
text message comes in and i can just poop mark as read without ever waking
the screen it's absolutely beautiful now google just needs to wake up to the need
for mark as read on everything only then
can i achieve true notification bliss also for lawless i kept google's g board
instead of immediately installing swiftkey like i normally do and with
some fine tuning ah that's really good i had no idea that you can slide across
the spacebar to reposition the cursor that is awesome
but as someone who uses voice dictation a fair bit it was still a relief to go
back to swiftkey so i usually find that when dictation screws up a word it
usually ends up getting a couple wrong because one mistake can change the
meaning of a whole sentence when you click to fix an error in swiftkey you'll
end up with suggestions that fix the rest of the sentence as well and it's
really awesome i also really liked the way that when you switch to landscape
mode the gesture controls stay on the same edge as in portrait mode this is a
lot better than the way that the home swipe up moves on the iphone to the
bottom of the screen requiring you to shift your hand in order to access it
making matters worse for the iphone is that some apps don't auto hide that bar
even while they're playing full screen video and it's probably not apple's
fault but the youtube creator studio is one such app and i use it very regularly
so it was super annoying and yet another neat little feature it's
small but this one actually made me really really happy when you don't have
your auto rotate on and you go and open up a photo that was taken in landscape
mode it actually prompts you to click a little button and it'll switch to
landscape and this is really nice for people like my wife who don't like auto
rotate but might want to show me a picture without me absolutely losing my
mind over the wasted black space all over the screen
which i guess leads us pretty well into the camera it's good
in fact it's great there are cases where the iphone 10s
tools it but there are other cases where the pixel 3's camera makes the iphones
look like it was designed by the same folks who calibrated all the tvs at your
local best buy i think calling this anything but a toss-up is probably not
being fair to the strengths of either one at least as far as the rear camera is
concerned but when it comes to the front camera google has done a fantastic job
here and i'm glad that someone is finally tired of the entire industry
sandbagging front-facing cameras even if
it does cost us this hideous notch as for its nearest Android competitor
the note 9 it is definitely showing its age a
little bit already so maybe we can follow this up with a full roundup once
samsung releases their next generation for now though i can say with confidence
that as long as you're okay with the slow initial shutter response time that
i got sometimes look at that that you will be very happy with the
pixel 3 xl i was actually blown away by these
videos that i got of my kids on halloween night like there's a lot of
noise in the image of course but remember that this is with horrendous
street lamp lighting this thing's got a great camera so pixel 3 then
on the one hand it's priced like other flagship phones with only really the
camera to set it apart but on the other hand
it has the most overlooked feature
a built-in fidget spinner give yourself the gift of listening and
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