Google Pixel vs Pixel XL (All Colors): Unboxing & Review By DetroitBORG

What's up guys Mike here, the Detroit Borg take a look at the new pixel and pixel XL. These are Google design, smartphones built by HTC. So really this is Google's vision of what they want their Android smartphone. To look like now. Both of these phones are running Android 7.1, but they also have a launch or unique to this film called the pixel launcher, which also comes with a feature: that's an exclusive to the pixel. At the time of this video, which is the Google Assistant, which has a lot of capabilities which we'll explore later in this video, the hardware itself is fairly expensive, retailing for 649 for the five-inch model and 769 for the 5.5 inch pixel XL they're, available in two capacities, 32 and 120 gigs, which adds $100 to the price. Now you have to keep in mind that you're locked down to the storage capacity built in because we don't have a micro SD card slot, but Google does offer free, unlimited online storage for all your photographs in their original quality.

So you won't run out of space based on your photographs alone. These are also available in three colors, very silver, quite black and really blue, which is a limited edition and, of course, we're going to take a look at all of them in this video so get into the unboxing. The boxes themselves are all the same size, whether you get the pixel or pixel XL, but of course the colors are reflected in the packaging design. The fact, if you remove the sleeve you'll, see that inside of those sleeves, the colors match the phone that they come with so again, nice attention to detail now. First up, let's get to the unboxing of the smaller phone, the 5-inch pixel.

So all we have to do is slice a tab along the side and the box opens up to reveal our phone. So, of course the phone is wrapped in lots of plastic. We just have to pull this tab to unwrap it. Now, let's set the phone aside for a moment, so we can take a quick look at all the accessories. So first up we have a larger packet, which does include a sim ejection tool.

We also get lots of paperwork, including a Quick-start guide. On how to power up your device and use the accessories now in terms of the accessories, we have quite a bit here. So on the right side, we have a flap that opens up to reveal our power adapter in addition to an u. s. PC to USB cable.

So the power adapter in this case is blue, so this is unique to the blue model. If you look at the power adapter on the other models, those are black, so the blue model is the only one that gets this special color, but they've also included a USB, a two USB cable, in addition to a USB an- and u is adapter. So if you have a lot of accessories or computer that doesn't have USB-C connectors on it. This is a nice solution, so the X up, let's get to the pixel XL, so I have two of them. The black and the silver.

So start me with a black model of the Box themselves, are the same size just that the contents inside have been resized for the larger 5.5 inch phone. Otherwise, all the accessories are the same. And lastly, we have a silver pixel XL, so this is the one I'll be using day to day I like this color best, and so I've added 120 gigs of stores, I sprung for the extra capacity on this model. I'm not sure if I'll need that, but it's nice to have it just in case now. Next up, let's go ahead and boot up these devices and get them set up for the first time now.

The boot sequence also reflects the color of the phone. So that's a nice small detail here, so you'll see black silver or blue, reflected in the boot sequence. Now when it comes to set up, of course, we can set up our fingerprint sensor, which is very fast, and you can set up as many fingers as you want. You can also train the Google voice assistant to your voice from here now, really, the only difference is between the pixel and the pixel SLR, the display size and the resolution. The 5-inch display gets a 1080p display, that's good for 441 pixels per inch, while the pixel XL is a 5.5 inch, quad HD display, which is good for 534 pixels per inch. It's almost 100 pixels more per inch, which means it's a sharper display, but at this pixel density, you're, not really gonna notice a difference.

The other difference is battery capacity. We have a 27 70 million power battery in the pixel versus 30 450 million powers in the pixel XL, so the design of the pixel and pixel XL are all aluminum and glass, so they do look like high-end smartphones, and they're made of excellent materials. The big design signature here, however, is the glass trim piece along the back, which is color matched to the phone you have so that glass trim piece is used for radio transparency for things like NFC, Bluetooth and cellular data, but you'll still find antenna stripes around the device at the bottom and along the corners, but they are color matched to the phone, so they do pay attention to those details. Now something that knows right away with the glass trim pieces on the white and blue model is that it reflects sort of a gold color. So it actually looks gold in some lighting situations.

It's a little strange I think it's because there's some sort of anti-reflective layer here for the camera system, which is sort of integrated into this glass panel, but the black model does not see the same effect. The great thing about this phone is that there's no camera bump at the top, and they've been able to solve this because the phone is thicker toward the top. Then it is toward the bottom, so the phone has a wedge shape to it now, for the most part, that wedge shape really isn't noticeable, but it does feel great in the hand because it's tapered toward the bottom, and it's thicker toward the back, which seems to fit your hand just perfectly so take a look at the buttons along the right side. We have our volume control in addition to a power button which has a raised texture, so you can distinguish it between that and the volume control just below it. On the left side, we'll find a NATO SIM tray, so you won't find a micro SD card slot combined in here.

It's just a NATO SIM tray now toward the bottom edge, which is very thin compared to the top you'll see our USB connector, which does support rapid charging. We also find a microphone and a single loudspeaker, so we don't have stereo speakers in this case and at the top edge of the phone, which is a bit thicker than the bottom edge you'll find a 3.5 millimeter, headphone jack. So when it comes to speaker quality, this is where things are a little disappointing, because we go from a front-facing stereo speaker set up on the 6p to a side facing mono speaker set. Now the speaker does sound pretty good for what it is, and I wish. They did a little more because we had stereo speakers on the 6p and a lot of phones are using the earpiece, in addition to the side speaker for better audio quality once again on the back of the phone is our fingerprint sensor, which is quite large.

So it's pretty easy to find, though this is not a physical button. It's just a touch sensor, so this does not act as a power button as it does on the LG phones. Now the camera back here is twelve point: three megapixels with a fairly small f2 point of apertures. It does have face detection and laser auto, focusing along with a dual LED flash now, unlike most flagship cameras today, this does not feature optical image stabilization, but the software stabilization here is really impressive. We're going to demonstrate that later now switch on the round to the front.

We have an 8 megapixel camera with an F, 2.4 aperture. Now, of course, on the front of these phones, we have two different screen sizes, 5, inches versus 5.5 inches. Both of them are covered in Corning Gorilla, Glass 4, which is slightly rounded off at the edges, which meets this nice chambered edge, which looks very nice, but once again both phones come with these stunning AMOLED displays Emily, delivers those deep blacks and pivot colors. Now my only complaint with these displays is that they don't get quite as bright as the iPhone 7 or the Galaxy S7, which means they get a little more washed out in daylight condition. So they're a little harder to see the spec sheet for the pixel includes a Snapdragon 820 1 quad-core clocked at around 1.6 gigahertz. We also four gigs of ram and an adrenal 530 GPU.

So in terms of performance, we have a lot of processing power and because Android 7.1 is so lean. Performance is fantastic on this device, it's very fast, easily the fastest device I've used to date. So when it comes to our Geek bench scores, the results are pretty familiar. We see a little over 1500 on the single core score and over 4000 on the multi-core score. This is certainly up from the Snapdragon 810 in the Nexus 6p from last year.

It's also up slightly from the 820 in the Galaxy S7. So this is one of the most powerful Android devices today, but this certainly is no match for the processing power of the a10 in the iPhone 7 plus. So when it comes to battery life, I primarily use the pixel excel, which is able to get me through a full day of use without the issue and that's about four hours of on-screen time and that's pretty impressive. That's right up there with the iPhone, 7 plus so large, handsets like this, should deliver all day use without issues, but you definitely want to charge it overnight. So when it comes to camera quality, this obviously was a big priority for this phone because, according to DX o mark, this is the best smartphone camera ever tested at this time.

So it scores 89, that's above the iPhone, the Galaxy Note 7. So when it comes to picture quality like most cameras, the images look fantastic in bright, daylight conditions. You see a lot of detail, but one of the things I love about this camera is that it produces very vivid colors. So it's not over saturated or to cool it's just about right. So you see a lot of color detail and just look fantastic, no matter how you shoot them, you can also achieve a fairly shallow depth of field.

Let's now, lets dramatic as some other smartphones today, but one of the things I love about this camera is that it has very fast, autofocusing, so you can see it adjusts really quickly to whatever you throw in front of it. So it's one of the best. An of systems I've seen it's a little quicker than the iPhones. The feel is a little smoother and now there's a brunt, but this is definitely the fastest I've ever seen. But when it comes to low-light, the results are pretty impressive, especially when you consider we have an F, 2.0, aperture and no optical image stabilization. So let me just come out really well exposed with good color detail.

This tends to be a problem with a lot of cameras. They either over saturate, their images or under expose them and produce a lot of noise and grain. Now, if you compare the iPhone 7 to the pixel, you'll see that the pixel does deliver better color and better exposure. So you see a little more detail, although the iPhone 7 plus, is a little less noisy. So when it comes to video quality, just like the still camera video looks very vibrant with great color detail, the only problem I seem to have is that white balance tends to jump around.

Of course, that's something you can lock in if you want, but the video is able to retain a lot of detail without too much compression and over processing. It's also able to find the right exposure for any shot, and it does adjust very smoothly now. The only issue here is that, because we don't have optical image stabilization, we only have software stabilization, which is very effective, so handheld video does look fairly smooth, but it does exhibit some over processing and some weird behaviors. So, for example, when I was doing a smooth, panning shot the cameras where the jerks abruptly in a very rhythmic way, so it's over processing some stabilization in situations where it's not needed. Now, it's less annoying if you're just walking around shooting video, but if you want to do a controlled shot, you definitely want to turn this off under settings now.

I. Do you think it's worth pointing out that this camera does seem to have an issue with glare more so than any other camera have tested previously? So the lens does like to pick up glare, especially from direct light sources, which I think is understandable. It's not a big deal, but it does crop up in some other unexpected situations. So, for example, oh she's, taking a shot in my front yard and I still got glare even without direct sunlight on a cloudy day and I think this is exaggerated by HDR+, which kind of amplifies the effect. So, if you're running into this situation, you want to turn off HDR+, but in many situations I don't see this until the image has been processed by HDR+.

So next up, let's dig through the interface. We have our fingerprint sensor on the back, which is quick and responsive. So this is Android 7.1. If we go to our sending ? you'll see there the Android 7.1, but this has the new pixel launcher on top of it, which brings a lot of new tweaks. So one of them is the new app drawer.

So, instead of a button, you can swipe up on the dock to access it. You can also tap this arrow here to bring it up as well, so the after is pretty familiar. You can scan through your apps by grabbing the slider here or just scroll through it. Furthermore, you can also get to your favorite apps up top, and then you can also just search for whatever you want. Another visual difference you notice what the pixel launcher is that the icons are round, so they're going with this round theme for most of the app icons.

It's not Universal, but most of Google's, first party apps and the system apps. Have these rounded icons, which I personally like I like the more consistent look? Now, if we swipe right, we get to her Google now launcher, which has all of our Google now cards, and if you go back to the screen here, we also have a quick button here for Google search, so that brings us to a Google Search app. Another new trick with a pixel launcher is a long press which brings us to these quick actions. So this is somewhat similar to 3d touch on iPhones, but instead of using pressure, it just uses a long press now, there's a tweak here that iOS doesn't do, which is the ability to create shortcuts for these quick actions right on your home screen. So, for example, if you want to take a video, just tap and hold and drag this quick action or shortcut to your home screen so now, I can start recording the video just by tapping that icon.

The pixel does have a few other tricks here. So if we double press the power button, this launches into the camera ramp. So of course, this works when the device is locked as well. So it's one way of quickly accessing that feature. Another trick here is that you can swipe across on the fingerprint sensor to invoke the notification shade.

This is very handy, so you have to reach toward the top of the display to get to it. And, lastly, if you're within the camera app just twist it twice to launch into the front-facing camera or switch back now, all of these features are available from the settings menu. So if we go to settings and go down to moves, we'll find it right here, so these are all features you can toggle on and off and of course, this also explains how to use them now, swiping down to our drop-down notification shade. This is pretty familiar for Android 7.0. So there's no big changes here.

You can expand these out to see more detail and, of course you can also respond to some items within the notification shape. Now, if you swipe down again, you can see that we have our quick setting toggles up top and, as you can see, they expand out. So the first row of six will always appear toward the top and if you want to rearrange these, so you have a different set up here. I have to do, is go to edit and drag and drop the icons you want to see in those first six. We also have a few others.

We can add here, such as hotspot data saver and more, and you're not restricted here in terms of how many you can add, so that's kind of nice and of course, once we're done here. Furthermore, we can go ahead and explore some of these. One of them includes nightlight, so this basically warms up the display, so it's easier on the eyes at nighttime. Of course, if you tap and hold on these, these will take you directly to the settings panel, which controls that feature, so I can have this turn on automatically with a sunset and sunrise if I want, or I can also enable or disable this feature entirely. Another new feature is called nearby now.

This is a location aware service that basically allows the phone to predict. What apps may be useful in a specific location such as links to a restaurant website or links to an interactive app for a museum, or something like that. Of course, we also have split-screen, because this is Android 7.0, so you can activate the flux screen by tapping and holding on the recent apps key. So this allows me to see recent apps which are compatible with this feature, so I can bring up YouTube, for example, and then I can go ahead and scroll through Chrome on one side or watch a video on the other side on YouTube. I can also resize it, and this also works in landscape or portrait orientation, and you can see you respond pretty quickly now.

The big news here is Google Assistant, which you can activate by tapping and holding on the home key to jump right to it. Of course, I can also say: ok, Google. What's the weather like tomorrow, it'll be mostly sunny in Rochester Hills tomorrow with the forecasted high of 53 and a low of 41, ok Google! What about Toronto it'll be cloudy tomorrow in Toronto, with a forecasted high of 47 and a low of 42? Ok Google? What about Orlando in Orlando tomorrow, it'll be sunny with a forecasted high of 78 and a low of 56 give me driving directions to there Orlando here you go: ok, Google! What's the population of Rochester Hills Michigan, the population of Rochester Hills was 72,000 950 and 2013; ok, Google! What's the medium income, the median household income is seventy-seven thousand seven hundred sixty-four dollars. What about West Bloomfield the median income for a household in the township was ninety-eight thousand eight hundred thirty-two dollars in the median age. How many people live there? Its population was sixty-four thousand six hundred nine years of 2010.

What about Warren Michigan? The population of Warren was 134 thousand nine hundred and twenty thirteen. So, as you can see, you can basically have a conversation with the assistant and smart enough to keep track of what you said previously. The Google Assistant also works when the device is locked, but you have to wait until a week's up before you start speaking. So let me give you an example: okay, Google, what's the weather in Toronto, if you just said something, I didn't hear what it was quite work: okay, Google! What's the weather in Toronto, it's currently 46 with showers there today there'll be showers with a forecasted high of 49 and a low of 41 so getting to our Settings panel. This has been week there, so we have our all section, and then we have a support tab which is new, so the support tab basically allows us to access 24/7 support for this device, either via phone or through an online agent.

So that's very nice to have now in terms of the Settings panel. It's pretty close to stock Android, so we have our all of our settings here we can scroll through and if we tap on any one of them, we can also swipe in from the right edge in order to access the other Settings panel. So if you want to jump to Wi-Fi, just click Wi-Fi and again swipe or tap this icon in the upper left corner now believe it or not. Wallpapers are a big deal with the pixel launcher. So if we go to wallpapers, there's a huge selection of them, one of them is a category for live earth.

Now these are basically 3d images of landscape. So, if I go ahead and select this one instead, this wallpaper as I swipe across the home screen, you can see it's where the moves as I swipe through it. Of course, the more home pages you have, the more it will move, but one of the cooler ones is actually your world. So if we select this and set wallpaper, you can see there's an explanation of exactly what this looks like. So if we set this as wallpaper and swipe across the screen, you can see the world sort of moves as I swipe across it, but this also shows us the current cloud conditions and is warranted it to my current GPS location, which at the center is Michigan, so you can see it's covered in clouds right now and the Sun is about to set.

So it's actually showing me the current sunsets in my location. So in terms of the camera app, it's pretty basic, we have tap to expose and focus, and it's very fast. We get manual control for our exposure as well lots of settings up here for our flash in addition to HDR. So if you want HDR+ on or off or set to auto, you can select it up here. We have our timer in addition to our grids, and we have a several to pick from 3x3, even the golden ratio you can select here so digging through the photo app it's pretty basic.

We have really fast tap to focus and exposure. Furthermore, we also have our manual exposure controls along the right side, snap, your photograph or tapped a hole to take a burst shot. You can see it takes really fast burst shots swipe in from the left edge, and you get to your mode, such as slow motion panorama, slow the sphere lens blur and settings and go to settings. We have a few things we can pick from. Not too many, you can change your resolution, so 12 by 3 megapixels is maximum which can be cropped to sixteen by nine at 8.3 megapixels. We also have an 8 megapixel front-facing camera very nice to have, in addition to video stabilization, which you can turn on and off.

There is no optical image stabilization here and, of course, you're limited to 10 EP on the front-facing camera, but you have ultra HD 4k available for the rear-facing camera now to get to video I have to do a swipe across on the screen to activate your video mode. You can start recording your video snap, a photograph while recording video tap anywhere to adjust exposure and focus or pinch in and out to zoom. So, in the end, there's a lot to love about the pixel. It's not the perfect hardware, but it does come with some key features, including a fantastic camera system, a great display and a software experience that is quick, fast and full of fantastic features that are not a waste of time or space. I, really like Google Assistant and I love.

How quick and fast the near stock Android experience is, and you can always count on Google to keep their phones updated to the latest version of Android, which is always half the battle with the other Android manufacturers. But of course it would be nice if we had stereo speakers and waterproofing, especially in this flagship price class. Alright, guys hope you enjoyed this look at the pixel and pixel XL. If you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up to. Let me know, and I'll, see you again in my next video.

Source : DetroitBORG