Google Pixel 3 Impressions! By Marques Brownlee

All right so the leaks were true. The rumors were real. Two weeks ago, Google invited me out to Mountain View California to their headquarters, to see what they've been working on. I could bring. My camera and I agreed to go, and they the condition was that I couldn't share. What I saw until today.

That day is now October 9th, so I can share. So this is your exclusive first looking hands-on at Google Pixel 3 and pixel 3xl there flagships for 2018. Now, of course, a lot of what's leaked was the hardware, and that was pretty much all right well, except for the conspiracies, but I'm going to go through everything, just as if you haven't seen it all, because it's actually still a lot of pretty exciting stuff and hey. Maybe you haven't seen it all yet, so you can start at the back of the phone and see it's pretty similar in design to last year's pixel ?, but with improved build quality and a lot of ways. It's a small design update, but it's clearly still a pixel, but it's now all glass from top to bottom, in between aluminum rails.

So typical 2018 fashion, but you still see this two-toned finish and that's because the bottom half of the glass is a sort of textured or frosted in a way that gives it this. This soft touch matte finish it's subtle, and it really only shows up from certain angles, but I like this a lot it feels nice, and before I forget the three new colors this year are just black, clearly white and not pink, and yes, those are the actual color names, and they're keeping the colored power button train going -. So the white has this mint colored power button interesting and the not pink. Has this bold orange power button and then the black on black one has a black power button. Also fun fact they painted the inside of the USB port black, which is a nice touch, completing the truly matte black everything pixel three well done on this one, google.

Aside from that, it does just feel a little heavier thanks to more glass, but overall, it feels good. The buttons are really click, and they feel premium in my hand. You still have the squeeze for assistant, and you do get wireless charging now thanks to the glass- and it's also now ip68 water-resistant, finally, and you'll notice, since they move the SIM card tray to the bottom and all the buttons are on the right now. The left side of the phone is completely blank just devoid of anything. It's totally smooth, which is also interesting, I'd, say the worst part about this.

Build is actually the fact that it's kind of slippery, despite the soft touch back. Ok, then around the front, probably the most buzzed-about part of all the leaks, the screens and that not the notch is on the pixel 3xl it's tall as hell alongside much larger than normal chin. Also, but there's a lot going on here, too. The regular sized pixel 3 does not have this notch, so the XL display is a 6.3 inch 960 by 1440, flexible OLED display that goes right up to the edges, as you can see, just as close to the edge as the 1 plus 6 or iPhone 10s or any other flagship, and the smaller pixel 3, with no notch of Shame has a 5.5 inch 2160 by 1080 display also flexible OLED, and I'm, calling it now. That's going to be a sneaky candidate for a small phone of the year.

That's just the state of phones were in right now. Small phones are getting big, there's no headphone jack and no expandable storage, just like last year's pixels. But we know there will be a 64, gig or 128 gig versions, there's Snapdragon, 845 and 4 gigs of ram inside which it's kind of weird to say, but that's actually less ram. That I'd expected we'll have to keep an eye on that, and it does keep the fingerprint reader on the back in the same spot where it belongs at least as long as they're not doing it below the glass yet and also still one camera which we'll talk about in a second, but you're, definitely wondering at this point: what's the deal with the notch right, we've seen phones with notches all year round, and we get if it's necessary. We want to get the screen as close to the edges as possible, but this notch is a lot taller specifically than any other, not you have seen in any phone and there's still a chin.

What gives so up at the top of both phones? Actually, there is not one but two front-facing cameras and a large front facing speaker. That's part of a stereo pair. That's it! No facial recognition, no IR, Projector. Nothing really crazy, like that. Just two cameras and a huge front facing speaker.

So is it worth that? Well, as far as the speakers I've heard them- and they are really impressively loud and clear, I'm- a fan of what I've heard from them, I'd say they're on par with the razor phone. Just for my first impression, although I didn't get to do any side by sides yet so, if you're the type of person to put your phone like in a corner of a room and fill it up with music, you can do that with this phone, like a mini boombox and, of course, gaming and watching videos and personal audio will all sound perfect and the two front-facing cameras are again a good idea, I liked it when I saw it with the LGA 40 and actually think these will be much better, because not only are they Google's cameras, and they're significantly better and quality on the pixel. But the difference between the standard and wide-angle selfie camera is bigger. It goes from a 75 degree field of view in the standard to a 97 degree field of view. Much wider now is that enough of a justification for this huge notch hard to say at this point, I mean I.

Guess speakers that are that big have to have that much room, but then again the grill is not that big I don't know we'll have to test it out for the full review, and we'll see if I end up getting used to it. Just like I got used to notches and all these other phones, but as of right now, that's like the defining characteristic people think of when they think of the Excel. So let me know if you guys think of that trade-off either way. That's about all! That's major and new, with the hardware again, a smaller pixel 3 is a much better looking phone for most people, but I'm willing to give the Excel a chance, because I am still a big phone person and on the camera that we all love so deeply on the pixel. It is in fact upgraded again, which has me very excited.

New 12 megapixel sensor at F, 1.8 with oh, is and of course same camera and the Excel on the small one, and you already know pixels visual core is still here. That's so important to why pixels been I. Guess the undisputed smartphone camera champ for the past year. Actually that ties neatly into software, because Google just always does so much with software and machine learning and AI, and that's a big reason why they have one camera on the back instead of two or three. So a lot of the features I'm about to go over with you.

While there are technically new to pixel.3 are also just software ready, there's top shot so once you've taken a photo. It analyzes other frames that were also captured and uses AI to decide if it can suggest a better one. Maybe someone was blinking or the hairs in their face. You don't even have to take another photo. It's just waiting for you, there's a new night mode in the camera.

That's actually called night sight. It's supposed to be significantly improved, but I got a test that to be sure, there's some other great night modes and other smartphone cameras. There's something called super resume, which this is super as so Google it uses literally the shaking or rotation of your hands as you're taking a picture or a few digital zoom. It will use that to compute a higher resolution, image from that zoomed photo, so it'll help you take better digital zoom photos. It's not necessarily going to be as good as optical zoom, but that's still pretty damn cool that Google Lens functionality is now built into the viewfinder.

So without even snapping a photo. You can just point the camera at a business card or a restaurant menu, and it will pull in like an email address or a phone number free to one touch. Call or compose shush mode is a new feature that literally just sets your phone to silent or do not disturb mode. When you put a face down on a table, nice and there's also now a call screening feature powered by Google duplex coming later and rolling out to a couple cities at a time. But basically, when you get a call, you can accept, reject or sent a call screen where that person calling you will interact with your Google Assistant, and you'll, see a live transcription of that interaction.

While it happens, and you can decide to cut them off or pick up unreal and then according to Google, because I asked everything, except for shush mode, that I just talked about, will be exclusive to pixel 3 and not come into pixel 1 or pixel 2. So, even though it's just software, it's technically still a pixel 3 features, but that's really all there is to know now that pixel, 3 and 3 XL are official. You got it all in one place and, like I said, I still think that smaller one is probably going to be the one. A lot of people are more attracted to small ones, starting at $7.99 and pixel. Three XL starts at 899, I.

Guess I'm, just happy that phones this year when they have a small version and a big version, they're, not handicapping the smaller version like it always used to be the smaller one, would have one less gig of ram, or they take the second camera out or something weird like that. Now the iPhone, 10s and 10s Macs same features except for display and battery pixel 3 pixels 3 excel same features except for display and battery. Now, aside from the phones, Google also had a couple other Hardware announcements. Today. First, the pixel in the box comes with an 18 watt, fast charger and a pair of USB-C headphones in the box.

They wanted everyone to know that they're the same style as the Pixel Buds and I have a lot of the functionality too, but an optional accessory, they're building is called the pixel stand, and it's a wireless charger that also triggers a docked Google Assistant mode. So it's like turning your phone into a Google home for 79 bucks and clearly the speakers are meant to be loud enough. So that's an interesting proposition for a nightstand there's also now $150 Google Home Hub, with a display and a couple new colors, obviously having a 7-inch touchscreen, makes for a much more user-friendly and interactive Google Assistant experience. So I thought that was pretty cool, and I was also now this new pixel slate, which I'm I'm gonna, be honest. It's a cool-looking tablet, but when I use it two weeks ago it looked like a laggy stuttering mess, but that was just you know, still late prototype phase, so I'm going to reserve judgment on that.

One till I handle a final version, so they're all this, but uh yeah. What do you think of pixel? Three? Obviously it was leaked and there was a lot of preconceived notions and now that it's all official, you probably have your thoughts either confirmed or totally changed. Who knows? I'm excited to get hands on the camera and definitely follow-on Twitter, for when I do get hands on the phone again and get to start staring sample photos. But let me know what you want to see in the full review: I'll be working on that shortly again, thanks for watching I'll see you guys in the next one peace.

Source : Marques Brownlee