Google Pixel 3 XL Review - That notch though... By The Tech Bros

So we're in the studio today to talk about the pixel three and the pixel three Excel, one of the most leaked phones of 2018 and for me personally, one of my most anticipated releases of 2018, and I've been using it on and off between the pixel and the OnePlus.60 and I have to say it is my favorite Android phone of 2018 yeah with the massive notch. It's still my favorite Android phone of 2018, let that sink in and while it's sinking in let's get to the next take and also keep in mind that my particular review unit is the clearly white pixel 3 XL, which is identical to the pixel 3 other than the massive notch, which we will get to later. Super sad face. Now, of course, the real reason why you buy a pixel is for that amazing software experience, and we will cover the software in a lot of detail. But first, let's get the hardware out of the way, so we can get to the really cool stuff. So the hardware on the pixel 3 is actually really nice, and I happen to like it a lot and when Google first introduced the pixel, they used the two-tone design, where the top one-third of the phone was glass and the bottom two-thirds of it was aluminum.

Now, obviously, it was a phone in its first generation, so it didn't really look that appealing, and I personally wasn't too big of a fan of it, but fast-forward. Two years later, Google is now doing all glass on the back, but they're still sticking with that two-tone design, the top 1/3 is super shiny, while the bottom 2/3 is kind of this frosted matte glass, and it feels really nice now, another premium touch they've made to it, or at least in my opinion, I really like this choice is that the shiny glass on the top thins out on the edges, and it actually spans all four corners of the phone and that frosted glass, like I, said it feels super, super nice to the touch, and it's also pretty premium feeling the only thing that's kind of bad about it is the phone is a scratch magnet, especially if you have the black color now I have the white one. So scratches aren't that obvious on my color, but if you own, the black one you'll probably see noticeable scratches on it like 10 or 15 minutes after you take it out of the box. The good thing is that a lot of these scratches are more cosmetic. They are actual damage, so you can buff them out or rinse them out.

Which brings me to my final bit. The pixel is ip68 water and dust resistant. So if you have to rinse it off, you will be just fine doing so. So if it's one thing that Google really had to get right this year with the pixel 3 it's the display. Last year when Google launched the pixel 2, mainly the pixel 2 XL, it launched to some serious display criticism to a point where some tech, YouTubers I can't even remember, was I.

Have one of them too. I can't remember, insert grayscale clip here from last year's pixel 2 video, so final thoughts on the pixel 2 XL, and is it worth your money? The short answer is yes, it's worth your money. If you can get past the small display issues, so I'm happy to report that the display on the pixel, 3 and 3 XL are absolutely amazing. Can you guys take a wild guess who they're made by Samsung? Yes, the person or company who makes every single big phone makers flagship display now considering the display is made by Samsung. The colors are a bit over saturated, but they're super vibrant, which is really typical of Samsung displays and when you're looking at it, you're going to think it looks amazing.

Now outdoor visibility is ok. Maximum brightness is also okay in direct sunlight, but whenever you're indoors or just most general use cases, the display on this phone is absolutely amazing. It's not going to let you down now. Of course, the pixel 3 XL has that ridiculously big notch we saw it in pre-release teasers, there were even some rumors thrown around about Google is throwing everyone on this wacky trail that the 3 XL was gonna, have a notch, and then they were gonna pull out this huge Scheme on twist during their event, and it was gonna not have a notch, but it here doesn't know how you say it so all that stuff aside, the pixel 3xl, definitely launched with a notch and I want to spend some time talking about the notch and mainly what the point of a notch on the phone. Actually is so the whole point of having a notch on a smartphone is to maximize your display real estate, while still keeping crucial Hardware elements on a phone.

So in the case of the pixel, you have two front facing cameras, and you have one on the three XL small front firing speaker packed into that notch. Do I like the notch on the pixel 3xl? Absolutely not do I think it's a waste of space. Yes, I feel like Google really made this notch way too deep. Considering the phone is only packing one small front firing speakers on the top and two front facing cameras, I kind of wish they would have just kept the design of the regular pixel three, which looks like last year's pixel, two XL, and they literally just would have had a small version of the phone and a big version of the phone with no display discrepancies between the two, but I will say this. You will get used to the notch over time.

It took me like two or so weeks to get used to the notch, but I finally did I'm just saying it looks good on some phones like the iPhone 10s, and it looks perfect on other phones like the OnePlus 60. So don't like the notch waste of space, but you will get used to it. That's what you should take away from this and last bit about the hardware. The phone does come with two front firing speakers I know when I was talking about the notch I said the 3xl only has one I was talking about one front firing speakers in the NACA itself. There is another, not are there's another notch.

There is another speaker on the bottom that front firing speakers much bigger than the one on the top because of said notch, but the speaker's themselves sound, perfect, and even at max volume they don't get distorted. I. Think Google really wanted to make the speakers on this phone sound, really nice, because when you pair the pixel three with a pixel stand, and you play music, it can kind of project that music into a decently sized room. So the phone needs good speakers to do that, and we're gonna touch on that little feature later on, so software has kind of been Google's thing even dating back to the old Nexus phones. Google would always reach out to hardware OEMs to build the phone hardware wise and Google would provide the software these days.

Things are slightly different. Google handles almost all aspects of hardware and software development in-house in order to create a smoother and better experience for the end-user Google's version of Android Pi, which is vanilla, quote-unquote. It's perfect, and it's well optimized for the phone performance on the phone itself is also really, really nice, thanks to the Snapdragon 845. But one thing I found fascinating, was Google opted to put four gigs of ram in the pixel 3 now I feel like they probably should have gone with 6, which would have been better or even eight, which is full-blown overkill, as in the case of the OnePlus 6 and 60. But 4 gigs of ram is interesting, and we're gonna touch on that later, but just know that, in terms of general day-to-day performance and even heavy usage performance, the pixel holds up just fine you're going to have no issues with it.

Now, let's talk about some of those really cool software features, interactive wallpapers, so Google has put in some wallpapers on the pixel 3 that, as the name suggests, will interact as you're using your phone they've added some like dandelion wallpapers that'll move as you're, actually touching the display of your phone. My personal favorite is a set of wallpapers called groove that the wallpaper will kind of bounce around and make cool little animations as you're playing music on your phone and there's even this one. That features like a pixie that will pop up in different spots on your always-on display. Once you use the wake/sleep button, some of them sound kind of lame I know, but it shows that Google is putting more thought into the user experience which is good. They always on display.

So I literally just mentioned this, but I really like this feature and yeah. It was also present on the pixel too, so it's not necessarily new, but it's still really useful. Basically, the phone's display is always on, even whenever you use the wake/sleep button, and it shows you relevant information like time, local weather and notifications and even your battery charge percentage. So you can get most of the information that some people might use their phone for or even wake their phone for right on your lock screen, and it doesn't take too much of a toll on battery life since it uses an OLED display, the phone only lights up, the pixels it needs to in order to make this function work active edge. Another feature: that's present on the pixel tube that made it to turn on the pixel 3, and I find most people to be kind of 50/50 on this particular feature.

But you can squeeze sides of your phone to activate the Google Assistant useful in a lot of situations, especially if I don't know, maybe your other hand is holding something. So you can't long press the home button to do it and just squeeze the sides. I also find myself kind of 50/50 on this feature sometimes I'll kind of squeeze the sides of my phone activate the assistant, but I also will occasionally long press the home button, activate the assistant so not too big of a feature, but still something cool worth mentioning now playing. So the cool part about this feature is that you can use it without intentionally using your phone. So all you have to do is go into your settings to enable this particular feature, but it allows the pixel to actively listen in the background, specifically for music.

So if you're in, like a caf?, or you're in like a friend's car or something like that and your pixel is on the lock screen, it can actively listen for music and nine times out of ten identify the song that's playing in the background, and it shows it right there on your always-on display and recently Google added another feature on top of this, where your phone will actually save the now playing history. Just in case, you want to kind of revisit a song that you heard earlier, but you just can't remember the name of it flip to Shh. So this one's kind of self-explanatory by the feature name, but all you have to do to put your pixel in to do not disturb mode, is flip the display upside down. So it's facing a flat surface now, I know you can go into the phone itself and enable do not disturb, but that requires at least some interaction with your phone, whereas this one's a lot more natural, let's say you're, sitting down at the dinner table with your family, we're sitting down to have food with a significant other, or you're just talking to someone, and you want to show them that you're being attentive flip your phone upside down. The phone goes in a do not disturb mode, and it turns itself right back off once you flip it right back up to look at it.

So yeah, no interaction, and it's really cool playground. So playground is something new, and it's an augmented reality experience that Google built into the camera of the pixel. It allows you to place certain characters from your favorite, TV shows or movies, or even objects into your world, to see how they interact with the surrounding things. Google also added the Avengers this year here with the pixel ?, they kind of featured Star Wars, and they featured some characters from stranger things. This year they featured some characters from The Avengers and naturally, I hung out with Iron Man quite a bit while I was using.

My pixel and the cool part about it is Google gives you the option to flip to the selfie cam, and you can take a selfie with your favorite Avenger and a lot of times the phone can detect whenever you're, smiling and depending on which character you use. They even do a cool, little kind of like points or something cool to the camera. That makes that selfie even cooler and my favorite software feature call screening via the Google Assistant. Now this feature builds on Google's duplex technology and, if you're not familiar with Google duplex, we've actually made a video over it. So we'll leave the pop-up on the screen for you to follow and watch that video after you finish this one.

So essentially you can allow the assistant to now take phone calls for you, and you'll see a live transcription of how that phone call is going right on your pixel, so the assistant answers the phone call for you, and you'll see this with an option that says screen call whenever someone calls you. So it's really obvious and as that person's talking you'll see options pop up underneath their dialog box questions like is this urgent? Do you need to reach them now? If the number is not in your address book, you can actually select an option to block the call and the assistant will tell that person. Please add this number to your Do. Not Call list do not call back again goodbye, and it even hangs up the phone for you now. If it's someone that you know or let's say you get a number from a call that you don't recognize, but through the transcription you can tell who it is, you do have the option to pick up the phone call and the assistant.

Does this neat little thing where it says thanks connecting you now, and then you can answer and start talking right away. This feature works really well for a lot of spam, callers and I wish. I could say: I used it on a ton of spam callers, but what I found is that once someone hears hi, the person you're calling is using screening service by Google a lot of times. If there's spam, caller they're going to hang up right there, most of the spam calls I've had screened, don't even make it past the intro dialogue from the assistant, it kind of sucks, but at the same time it saves you from that hassle and from my understanding, Google's also going to bring out an another feature to stack with call screening where it'll now save those transcriptions for you to go back and review later on, just in case, if you need to so yeah call screening via the Google Assistant, that is some next-level stuff and chances are. If you call me on my pixel I'm screening, it doesn't really matter who you are I'm, sorry and, of course the pixel stand.

So some of the software features that come with the pixel stand obviously require you to purchase additional hardware. The $79 pixel stand. So if you're, considering purchasing the pixel stand, this little of the review will be for you. So yes, the pixel stand, allows you to charge your pixel 3xl fast and wirelessly, but that's really only scratching the surface. When you put your phone on charge, you will have a dedicated button to access the Google Assistant on your always-on display.

If you set an alarm while your phone is charging on the pixel stand before your alarm goes off, the pixel will attempt to wake you up using ambient lighting, so it kind of shuffles between, like faded, orange colors, all the way up to slightly bright, yellow, it's attempting to mimic a sunrise, and they do it in order to wake you up more gently, as opposed to out of nowhere and alarm just going off, and it just kind of freaks you out for light sleepers I feel like this could actually be useful, but I can sleep through a tornado like literally, if you knew my mom, she would tell you, but for light sleepers, this actually sounds pretty cool. When you wake up- and you say, hey Google good morning, the assistant will provide you relevant information, such as your schedule for the day traffic on your way to work, and it'll even go over news topics tailored to your interests. All without you having to touch anything, you can adjust your pixel stand settings to enable do not disturb as soon as you put your phone on charge. This is more for, like an end of the day, use scenario where you just kind of want to put your phone on charge. Unwind get ready for bed, and you don't really want to be disturbed but still cool.

You also have the option to turn your pixel into a digital photo frame and the phone will automatically shuffle through some of your favorite photos. While it's charging, if you're listening to music it'll, display that information in a spotless way, and it'll use those loud front firing speakers to project the music into your room and if you have a nest, hello, doorbell and someone knocks at your door, the phone will automatically show you who's, calling using the webcam built-in to the doorbell all without you having to touch a thing so yeah, pretty cool, so I'm sure you've gathered after all of this stuff, that the pixel has a really, really good software experience, and it seems to only be getting better over time, but the pixel did not launch with perfect software. In fact, there were a couple bugs at launch. I know the pixel 3 has had issues with RAM management and even some issues with photos, not saving. Once you take pictures, Google is from my understanding, fixing these issues with the December security patch, so yeah no phone really launches with perfect software, but at least Google is working to fix these issues really quick and in general, you will enjoy the software experience on the pixel 3 a lot.

Last year, Google crushed the smartphone camera game with the pixel 2 and pixel 2 XL, and this year they took that camera, and they made it even better subjects and photos come out really clear on the pixel. Colors are always taken accurately. The phone does really well handling a lot of situations with tricky dynamic range. It's just a really solid camera, and it's amazing. The thing that Google does all this with one lens and computational photography.

Now we did make a comparison, video between the pixel 3 and the iPhone 10s, specifically in the camera department, and if you missed it, we'll leave a link to that video as well now for those of you concerned with the actual specs of the camera, it's 12.2 megapixel shooter, with F 1.8 aperture and on the front of the phone. You have two front-facing cameras. One of them is a normal wide-angle, while the other one is a super wide angle with the ridiculous field of view. So you can cram all of your friends and family members into those selfies, so the most average thing about the pixel it's battery and keep in mind that this is coming from my experience on a pixel 3 XL. So naturally, the battery life on a pixel 3 will probably be shorter.

Just because the battery size is smaller right. It only makes sense, but I could probably get through an entire day if I'm doing heavy usage on the pixel all day. Long I'll probably have to put it on as fast charger by about 7:30 8 o'clock, just to kind of give it some extra juice, and that's on the XL like I, said earlier. So bad life on the pixel is entirely average. Today, I've been using it to watch a lot of YouTube videos, use GPS navigation.

Things like that, and I've only got like an hour and 45 minutes of screen on time, but I'm down to 55 percent battery, so not the greatest battery. Considering a phone, this big, typically packs a large battery I've really enjoyed my time with the pixel and I mentioned in the beginning of this video that I've been kind of flip-flopping back and forth between the pixel and the OnePlus 60, but I always find myself coming back to the pixel. For whatever reason, just because of the really, really complete software experience, the phone seems to provide and just how well the assistant integrates and brings new features to this phone that you really don't find on too many other Android phones. But the pixel three is not perfect, and it's also expensive. There are a couple of things I would like to change about the phone, one of them being that notch yeah I'm used to it, but that doesn't mean that I, like it I, would much rather see it go, and a different design be implemented, know maybe make the notch a little wider, but thinner or just go pixel three, no not put a bezel on the top of the phone and just make the phone look a little more uniform.

Secondly, I would like to have seen Google put at least 6 gigs of RAM into the phone now I'm not saying the phone needs it. The performance is awesome, but at least adding 6 kinds of makes it more future-proof. As Android continues to update grow become more complex, you know, eight gigs would have been overkill, but hey. That's like super future-proof right, and it's expensive, so the pixel three starts at 799 dollars and that's for 64 gigs of storage, the pixel 3xl starts at 899 dollars and that's also for 64 gigs of storage. Now, if you want to double it to 128, you add a hundred bucks to each price and if you're, someone who's not the best with your phone but doesn't really like cases, and you may want to opt in for preferred care- that's an additional 130 dollars.

So my pixel 3 specs out at well over $1000, it's honestly hard for me to stand here and try to convince anyone to purchase a phone for over $1000, but much like the iPhone tennis max and the Galaxy Note 9. If you do end up shelling out that much money, I, don't think you'll be disappointed because the pixel three brings a lot to the table, mainly in terms of its software. So if you do go for it, I don't think you'll be disappointed in the slightest, but as always guys, this wraps it up. I'm done. Thank you guys so much for watching, don't forget to hit like and subscribe.

Let us know what you thought in the comments section and as always, I'll catch you guys in the next one peace. So if you were around less, if you were around less if you're around last year, you are one year old.

Source : The Tech Bros