Google Pixel 2 XL Unboxing and First Impressions By Android Authority

Hey Joshua Verger, what's going on everybody, and it's time to unbox and give my first impressions on the pixel 2 and the pixel 2 XL, brought to you by audible. Now we're only doing an unboxing and first impressions today, because we wanted to make sure we had enough time with these devices to bring you our full review, which you can look out for within the next week. But let's go ahead and get into the unboxing when I first got a glance at these boxes. First thought that went through my mind was I. Wish I got the Panda 1, the pixel 2 XL is what we're unboxing here, and it comes with a number of different accessories, including a small tool, in order to connect other devices to the phone. In order for you to transfer your data.

After that, you have a USB, type-c, cable and the USB type-c plug adapter. This will allow for fast charging on the device. So you never really have to worry too much about power draining out, and then there is the one accessory that I think everyone is going to be a bit bummed out about the USB type-c 2, headphone, jack, adapter, I'm. Sure a lot of you are ready to get right into the comments and talk about how you hate the fact that the headphone jack is gone from this device. Well, I kind of share your sentiment.

I have wireless headphones that I love using, but when those run out of battery I do hate having to have the adapter on me connected to my favorite pair of wired earphones, just to be able to do things like play music or play YouTube or play some audiobooks from audible, getting the device into my hand. During my setup, I was able to see that the pixel 2 XL is still a pretty attractive device. It might not have too many bells and whistles, but it has everything that you kind of need. The essential is all available right where you need them like the fingerprint reader, which is right underneath the glass panel that is sort of a calling card for the pixel design. Now the smaller pixel 2 is obviously going to be the easier to handle one and slightly more accessible for a lot of users out there.

But you do miss out on the 18 by 9 aspect ratio screen that the pixel 2 XL can boast that aspect ratio makes for a device that is a little taller than it is wide, and it's very akin to a lot of the devices we're seeing this year from the likes of Samsung and LG, which have the same aspect, ratio and overall, the same kind of form factor. The only thing that's missing here is the pixel to excels ability to get the screen to go as close to the edges as possible. That might be a big deal to some of you out there, but it isn't really that big a deal to me. This does mean there's a little more to the chin in the forehead. But that's because you have the front-facing camera and also dual front-facing speakers, which all perform pretty well so far and another thing that I really love about this display on either of these devices is the always-on display.

This is something that has been missing on Nexus devices and pixel devices for a long time now, and we've enjoyed it on other manufacturers devices. Now we have our own version of it and there's an extra feature. The phone is basically listening for music cues at all times and when it recognizes a beat or a lyric, it will start to search for what that song is, and it appears in the always-on display, and on top of all of that, there's a little texture to the backing that is underneath this glass panel. That provides a little of grip. It doesn't just slip about in the hand too crazily and, of course, you're going to be holding the phone pretty tight because there's a squeeze feature now.

This isn't the first phone to have a squeeze feature, and it does have one specific function: opening the Google Assistant, even though it might have been nice to program this to other features. I would argue that this is probably the best way to open up Google Assistant at any given time and Google Assistant can do a ton of stuff. Not only are you constantly googling things throughout the day potentially, but it can also open applications or trigger functions inside the device like opening applications like shadow of war, it is pretty easy to trigger the squeeze, depending on how you're picking up the phone. For example, if I was using my fingers in order to pick up the device off of a table, I might squeeze it just hard enough that it triggers Google Assistant, not a huge deal, but something to keep in mind. Another exciting feature about these pixels is the camera experience.

The rear camera is only a single camera. It's not going to have dual lenses whatsoever, but it is going to use computational photography in order to use data that can help you get the best quality out of your shot, I'm going to give you more camera samples and also tests on the optical image, stabilization and other features of the camera in my full review later on. But for now, I want to talk about the front-facing camera, an 8 megapixel shooter. That actually has a portrait mode. Aside from the fact that the front-facing camera seems to be pretty high quality in and of itself, turning on the portrait mode brings in that computational data in order to draw out the foreground and blur out the background making for while a portrait, pictures in portrait mode tend to be really pleasing to the eye, at least so far, and we haven't tested it in low-light editions yet, but we're pretty happy with what we see so far.

You don't see any egregious problems with the foreground subjects getting cut out along with some background elements: the pixel ? and the pixel ? Excel come with the snapdragon 835 4 gigabytes of RAM and large quantities of on-board storage. Depending on how much you pay. There are different sizes in the batteries, but I wanted to tell you about the smaller battery in the pixel ? I. Do a lot of video calls these days and on Facebook, messenger video calls I went from 100 to zero on a very long call with somebody that went for about three and a half hours after that, however, I went back to normal usage that included some gameplay of shadow of warm YouTube Facebook social media browsing all the above, and I was able to get five and a half hours out of that battery. So we're going to do more testing on these batteries, but so far, I actually think the smaller pixel 2 is a good indicator that battery life on these phones will be pretty good.

And finally, let's talk about the software Android Oreo, which is exciting, because this is going to be the first time I'm using it on the daily. All the elements, including text, seem to flow about perfectly exactly the way they are supposed to in a stock version of Android and being able to just seemingly flow from different applications to the recent apps screen to even the picture-in-picture, which is automatic for applications like YouTube just seems right, I'm inclined to say that this is the version of Android that everybody should be experiencing, and that has been true for pixels and Nexus devices in the past, but with Android 8. There are a lot of great additions, including even the battery life application that is built into the settings and shows a lot of great statistics as to what is really taking up your screen on time. But let's pop back to that Sophia took a little ago and let's talk about Google Lens, Google Lens is still going to be put into Google Assistant in the coming day. So we can't really test that part out yet, but it is built into Google Photos.

Now- and you can do really quick scans of photos that you've already taken in order to do quick, Google searches, but I want to talk about the selfie I took because when I put it through the Google Photos Google sense apparatus, it was able to read the text on my shirt that you can see here, which is a restaurant out in Maui. That is an incredible restaurant, and it was able to provide that search automatically. We obviously can't judge Google Lens, yet until we get the full version of it with Google Assistant, but I thought. This was a really cool feature and I wanted to share that with you right now, and so there you have it my first impressions on the pixel tube and the pixel to excel. There are already some great features about this phone that I'm using on the daily and the battery life seems to be surprisingly good so far, but we're going to give you all of our final thoughts in our final review.

As always. Thank you guys very much for watching, and we do want to give another thanks to our sponsor audible. Who is teaming up with us to bring you guys, a free audiobook and a free 30-day trial to take advantage of it? You can head down to the link in the description, audible. com, slash, Android Authority, now, audibles vast library includes a ton of business science and motivational audiobooks that can make every morning a time for development and productivity. As you can see.

Quite a few of my audiobooks are right in this category right now, I'm listening to the book of joy, which is an exploration on how to be happier by two of the happiest people on earth, Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama. It's an enlightening edition pun intended to my mornings, make the most of that morning drive to add motivation to the rest of your day with an audiobook from audible. com, so get your free, audiobook and 30-day free trial. By going to the website, audible. com slash Android authority, that's audible.

com, slash Android, Authority, transform your commute ride with audible, so stay tuned for our full review coming within the next week, and you can subscribe to the channel. So you can keep up with that in all that we do here at Android authority comm. You can drop some likes on this video because we love to see those thumbs up head on into the comments, and I'll be around for a little responding to some comments and your questions, and then you can stick around for even more because we are your source for all things. Android.

Source : Android Authority