Google Pixel 3 XL Review: The Almost King By Gary Explains

Now, the first thing you notice about the pixel 3 is this iconic two-tone design with smooth glass backs hello. My name is Gary Sims, and this is the pixel 3 XL, and today I want to tell you what I think about it. So the pixel 3 and the pixel 3 XL, were recently released by Google I've been testing this one now for about a week or so, and there are lots and lots of things to like about this phone, and there are some things that really are not very good at all. So, let's start with the good things, and we have to start with the screen. It's an absolute pleasure to use this device. It's got a really nice P OLED display on it, I mean you get those deep blacks.

You get good contrast and all the time I've been using the device, it's really been a pleasure visually to look down at the device and see everything that's being displayed on there and likewise the performance is of course, flagship level performance. We've got the Snapdragon, 805 processors, and you're not going to have any problems, doing just about any activity that you want to do with this phone. You couple that, of course, with Android 9pi and any tweaks and integrations that also Google has put in there, and then you've got a perfect overall software and hardware experience. The device also comes with fast charging and wireless charging, and there is a fast charger included in the box. Unlike some OEMs who will charge you over $1000 and won't even include a fast charger I'm talking to you Apple and then on top of that.

Of course, we've got things like the dual front-facing speakers and, of course, the camera experience is absolutely amazing on this device, and we'll dive more into the camera in a little. A last but not least, the charging is done via USB type-c, which means it's a standard charging connector and will work on a whole variety of different charges, including those that support power, delivery and, in fact, I actually charge a couple of times using the charger that I have for a Chromebook of mine and I just plugged. It in and it did fast charging straight away without any problem. Now there are some things about this device that some people care about, and they make an issue about it, and these are things that I just don't care at all, but I will list them, because some people find them important. First course is the notch on the pixel 3xl.

Personally, I don't care, I didn't mention. The yacht right is my iPhone access review. Recently, I don't care about the notch. You can switch off if you want to in the developer options. If it annoys you well then get a different phone me I, don't mind either way.

There's also been quite a lot of said that it's a YouTube signature device. I still don't really know what that means. So I don't basically care because it doesn't seem to affect anything that I can see. In my day-to-day usage I'm sure someone will point out that it means that there's something. That's amazing, okay, fair enough, but it doesn't mean anything to me on top of that.

There's the digital well-being settings that you now get as part of Android PI, and it's also there in the pixel 3 to allow your kind of to wind down and not use your device. So much basically I say if you can't stop using device when you need to there's something wrong with you, and you don't need a phone to tell you to stop using it. It's not your mother and then the other big thing that some people are talking about is that fact it has 4 gigabytes of RAM. Actually, 4 gigabytes is certainly more than enough, and you won't have any problems in usage device with 4 gigabytes. Google know what they're doing Google know what's out there and 4 gigabytes in their consideration is ample.

Sometimes you do wonder whether these extra gigabytes of RAM are just really for spec sheet, boosting to make something look more interesting and more powerful than well what you really need, and so those are the things I, don't really care about some people care about them, but there are some things: I do care about that really are negative points with this phone. The first is as normal with Google: there is no SD card support, no way of expanding the internal storage. I actually love my notate, because I can actually put an extra SD card inside it. I've also got other phones here in the house that we all put extra SD because if it's a cheap and easy way to expand the storage in your phone and by not including it limits your options talking about limiting options and ever think that Google have done it's not the first time, they've done it they've done it again. Here is there is no 3.5 millimeter, headphone, jack I think that's quite crazy and in fact, there's been a perfect article recently published on Android Authority, which just shows you that, even with the best Bluetooth codecs that exist today, you still cannot max the same audio qualities you get over a wired pair of headphones, and I'll leave a link to that article in the description here below and also for myself. I just can't cope with the idea of having to charge up my headphones.

I have a household here of five people and at nighttime I'm plugging in your know, five phones, and I've got speakers to plug in and tablets to plug in and laptops at NI EHS charging and another thing: I don't need a charge is a pair of Bluetooth headphones. We all want headphones, I want them. Wired I want to plug them in I, want them to work, no matter when and how and if I've forgotten or not forgotten, to charge them up. That's what they're there for, and it is also worth make sure this phone does have a small camera bump. Now it's not as big as the one that you'll find on the latest iPhone.

However, it is there now, if you have it flat on the table, and you are typing, or you're typing in the bottom half of the screen, which is where the keyboard is calls is normally found. There is no actual movement. If you go up to a top left-hand corner, you will start to see some movement because, of course, the camera bump is in the opposite corner. So that's just something to be aware of it's only a little of movement, because it's actually quite a small camera bump and because I mainly notice it when I'm typing I didn't actually find it a problem on this model. But it is something to watch out for and the other bad thing.

That really needs to be mentioned, that this phone is a battery life. Now I'm going to this a bit deeper in a few moments, but basically people are kind of getting between three and four five hours on screen time and all the different reviews. I've read have also things like, and you'll get a full day's use. If you are careful or if you have moderate use, but we often found ourselves reaching for the charger by time. The evening comes so basically the consensus for the 3 and the 3 X n.

Is the batteries just aren't up to the job? Well, it's actually more likely that there's actually being placed too much demand on the batteries and, as I said I'll talk about that in a moment. But if you really like to have long battery life, do not pick this phone now. Of course, the key selling point of the pixel 3 seems to be the cam and Googles put a lot of effort into making the camera an excellent experience, mainly because it's only got that whiling camera lens on it. So I'm not talking about dual cameras here or three cameras or whatever other combination other OEMs are making it just got that one camera and Google want to make it the best experience you can get from that single lens and the truth is they have Mall's that by and large and the camera is absolutely excellent for a smartphone device. So, as I'm talking here, I'm going to be showing you some of the pictures I've taken with this phone and of course the real big point is that Google include all this AI stuff, so, first, with portrait mode, rather than using any kind of depth, sensing using a second lens or infrared, or anything like that, all the portrait mode stuff is done using AI working out where the people are in the foreground.

Distinguishing the background and then blurring the background, another AI related feature, of course, is night sight. Now it's not officially out yet, but you can get it if you know where to look for it and that again uses AI to bring out and to brighten up pictures have been taken in low-light, and it seems to be working so far very, very well and there's also the super zoom, which again is trying to use AI and digital manipulation to reproduce kind of high levels of optical zoom, more than just zooming in the number of pixels actually trying to repair the damage. That's done to the image by bringing in so close and there's a couple of pictures here that I'm showing you that we're done at two times, zoom I'm, pretty sure that if you start going to three four five times zoom, the picture does actually fall apart quite quickly, but for two times zoom, which is basically what the other devices provide when they have two lenses on them. Actually, it seems to be a pretty good job. It also includes video stabilization.

Here is a shot of me walking through a park and, as you can see, it can be quite warp II, as it's trying to smooth out the steps I was making as I went through the park there. Another great feature is the wide selfie shot, which is really, really good. If you kind of you know, you're out with the family you're in a restaurant, you with a group- and you want to take that picture- how many times have we all kind of tried to stretch our hand just that little just to try that find that right angle to get everybody in the group with that wide-angle selfie shot that becomes a lot easier. So that's a perfect feature there by Google and while we're talking about an is worth mention course, you've got full integration with Google Assistant, which you can now get by squeezing the side of the phone and that allows you, then, to kind of use your voice to issue various commands. Ask those questions through the Google Assistant, as you would with, for example, one of Google smart speakers and, of course, the other place.

The AI is used in the new call screening function, which basically means. If you get a phone call- and you don't recognize the number, then you can ask the AI to kind of announce that you want to find out why that person is calling, and my colleagues over Andrew authority have found actually most people when they get to that stage. They just hang up. They don't actually can be bothered to actually have a conversation with the AI. So we incent to see from a social point of view whether this kind of functionality actually kicks in and is more used over the future.

Of course, from a technology point of view, it's exciting that we can kind of get the AI to kind of handle it in the background for us, and then we can pick up and speak to them if we really want to. But we know from a social interaction point of view, we'll have to see whether that actually really does work. So I said we'll jump back in to the battery and I just want to mention the problem is its the camera that actually kills the battery? If you just do a 20-minute video, it's actually going to take up kind of like 12 or 13 percent of your battery time and taking photos over an hour you're going to find that hours worth of taking photos will kill your battery by ten or even twelve percent. Now, to put that into context, if you play a complicated 3d driving game, for example, that may only take up your battery, maybe nine or ten percent in an hour. So before 3d games were really the thing that killed the battery on a phone, and you really couldn't play too many games because it would just ruin your battery life for that day.

Now actually what's happening is taking. Photos is a thing that is killing the battery life and, of course, what's been happening. Is me and other reviewers on YouTube we've all been keen to try out the camera. We've all been keen to take do lots of photos, and actually that is a thing that has killed the battery and here's the irony of the whole thing if you do get a pixel three, because you want an advanced camera. The usage of that advanced camera is actually going to reduce your day-to-day battery life.

Okay, that's about it! Those are my thoughts on the pixel three and the pixel three XL I really hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please do give it a thumbs up. Please don't forget to subscribe, and please do tell me in the comments below what you think about the pixel three. Okay, that's it I see you in the next one.

Source : Gary Explains