Pixel 2 Review: Almost Perfect By Jon Rettinger

This is the Google Pixel 2 and this is the Google Pixel 2 XL. The not surprising sequels to last year's flagships from Google, and in my heart I wanted to love these phones. I was a big fan of the last gens, the cameras are incredible. Throughout the course of this review I am going to talk about weather or not you should get these phones, if I am buying these phones, and who these phones are for. As we go through the different categories perhaps you will find out which camp you are in. Alright so lets start where I always begin my reviews with the screen because that's mostly what you are looking at.

It's a 5-inch version and a 6-inch version depending on which phone you want to go with. It's a 1920 x 1080 panel or it's a 6-inch 2880 x 1440 panel. Both screens look really nice this time around. I was not a fan of the screen technology on the last-gen Pixel phones but these look really nice. They don't get that bright but when you do go outside you notice that they will work in direct sunlight, which is quite nice to say and also the black levels are incredible as you would expect from an OLED panel.

The colors are bright and vibrant. The whites are incredibly white. On both phone I didn't have any soft of screen bleed as you get often times if you look at an all white image or an all black image. So pretty impressed with screen technology. The big things for me, can I see it in the sun how bright is it going to get at night and how do blacks and colors look, and everything across the board looked really nice on both phones.

While I do love the screen, the auto-brightness calibration is super wonky. It's nothing I ever noticed on any other phone. It was changing all the time when I was just holding the phone. If I was in a dark environment, it got too dark. If I was in a bright environment, it didn't brighten the screen enough.

I had to turn it off. Something's got to give, so hopefully a software update will fix it. Next lets talk about design. This is a category that's becoming increasingly important to me. It a big way of how phones differentiate themselves from each other.

How they look and how they feel. Let's start with the Pixel 2. That is not a pretty picture from a design standpoint, with the Pixel 2. It looks like it got left in 2015. Its got gigantic bezels, its got that big Pixel chin and I get that there big bezels there and I also get that there are front facing speakers now on the phone but those bezels on the smaller device look almost inexcusable by 2017 standards and considering this phone is going to be Google's flagship until almost the end of 2018.

It is becoming even harder to understand why they would go with that really antiquated design for the Pixel. So it's a different story on the Pixel 2 XL. It is definitely the better looking of the brothers. It's a way better looking phone, still retaining the front facing speakers of its smaller brother but in a way better package. In fact, the bezels are so much smaller the phone itself, despite having a screen that's an inch bigger, is not even that much larger than the Pixel.

A couple things that I don't like about the build, and this is on both phones, you can very clearly feel where the screen goes into the body. There is definitely a ridge there and dust is getting caught. I imagine they did that to make it a little bit more durable during drops, so no glass is going to be on the outside. As you scroll your finger definitely hits up against it and there is certainly a noticeable gap you can feel with your finger. I should at least talk a little bit about durability cause while I was testing this phone, admittedly without a case, I dropped it on concrete and I didn't have any cracks, scratches, or any issue at all.

So perhaps that seam along the device that I was complaining about collecting dust does protect the screen if you happen to drop it on the corner. So both phones have a texture on the back that is kinda nice to feel. I've been using glass phones for a while wether it was the Samsungs or the iPhone 8 that I had been testing before this, but it does feel nice and no it is not fingerprinty on the back of the phone so hurray there! The fingerprint sensor is where fingerprint sensor should be, on the back, really nice and easily placed. You can locate it quickly with your finger. It is also going to respond incredibly fast.

So I think the big questions that I had as I was using the Pixel 2, is this stock Android anymore? It used to be the Nexus phones and the Pixels were stock Android but as things are only coming to the Pixel-the launcher unique to the Pixel, always on display unique to the Pixel, things like that make you wonder if this even stock Android anymore or is this one of the skins or the UI that is put on top of Android for the Pixel line. I am not sure what stock Android is anymore, maybe this is it but still unique to one or two phones. What do you guys think I am not entirely sure. It used to be one of the benefits of using a Pixel phone was you got a native Google experience, now you're getting a native Google experience that's tweaked and customized for the Pixel 2, but those tweaks are really nice. I like the always on display.

It's almost identical to what we saw with Samsung and LG. It doesn't mean it doesn't work, and it works really well, handy to see information at a glance. I liked having that. As you go ahead and turn the phone on and start swiping through it you will notice the launcher is different. So Google moved the search bar to the bottom.

I get why they did that, it's easier to reach with your thumb. On top of that is your dock, on top of that is things you can customize, and then on top of that you've got the new At a Glance where you can set things like weather traffic or calendar. So what that's going to mean in real world usage is about 20% of your screen, you cannot customize because you've got a gigantic Google Search and then your dock on top of that. Obviously this can be fixed by putting on a third party launcher. I am a big fan of Nova, but for the first time in a while, I do not like the launcher that comes with Nexus or Pixel devices.

It takes up way too much precious screen real estate. It's weird for me having that gigantic Google Search bar at the bottom, especially when I can launch the assistant and subsequent search in a myriad of different ways by squeezing the phone or long pressing the home button. So that's personal preference thing, but for me, the new UI tweaks, specially on the launcher are a no go. Other things that are new here, its got something called now playing. You have to turn it on, it's not on by default, but when you do it'll show you on the lock screen what song is playing.

I found it to be inconsistent. Sometimes things worked, sometimes it didn't, but I imagine that'll get better with software updates but out of the box, it was kind of squirrely. Another things that's new to Android 8.0 is notification dots. I initially thought that was just a fancy way of showing notifications. I've got 4 unread messages! But it is a really cool way to get information in context with the app.

It gives you more information a badge count. I liked having it, some of you may not, but I appreciated what it did. So camera is what's been the big deal with the Pixel line of phones. Google said when the first Pixel came it has the best camera ever, and they said it again when the Pixel 2s came out-Best Camera Ever! I can't say it's the best camera ever since pretty much every flagship camera looks good, but man these pictures do look beautiful when they come out. There's a portrait mode built into here.

It'll blur the background and keep the stuff in the foreground in focus. It also works on the front facing camera. I found when it works, it works really well but there are times when it doesn't and things look all kinds of strange but presumably that will get better because of machine learning but at least out of the box, it works like 85%-90% of the time. It does look really good. Speaking of looking really good, the pictures coming out of this thing look incredible.

If you are outdoors in ordinary sunlight the photos look gorgeous. You're not getting the over saturated look like you get with a Samsung. You're getting really true to image colors. Things look absolutely beautiful here. Low light is another area where the camera shines.

If you don't have that much light, if you're taking pictures of your kids like I do when the sun is down, it is really nice here. So I don't have a shaky hand but often times I am running raking video. This has not only optical stabilization, but optical stabilization and digital both at the same time. Things look really stable. If you have a shaky hand or trying to film while you're running, skating, or doing something else weird with your video camera, it's going to look pretty stable.

So battery is one of the few areas where these phones differ. You've got a 2700 mAh in the Pixel 2 and a 3520 mAh in the Pixel 2 XL. As you would expect from pretty decent sized batteries, battery life is going to be pretty good on both. I am very easily able to get through a full day on both devices with almost 50% battery life left, and that's with pretty extensive usage. A lot of YouTube browsing which you can do in full screen this time, a lot of social media, a lot of email, and just looking at the screen quite a bit.

I found having the always on display actually saved my battery a lot because I am not turning on the screen a lot checking notifications. That's probably why I am up in the 50s opposed to being in the 40s, where I usually am, on other device. No issues with battery life at all. Intangibles are usually where I make my decision on phones. What does this give me that another phone doesn't and these Pixels give you a lot of stuff.

You get smart storage, unlimited photo storage with Google Photos, you get guaranteed software updates. They are priced pretty well and pretty competitively compared to the competition, but there is a lot of negatives here as well. You're not getting expandable storage. You're not getting a headphone jack, which is mind boggling-especially on the XL considering it is based on the XL which has a headphone jack. You're not getting wireless charging, but of corse a really solid quick charging feature.

You're getting IP67 instead of IP68 like most flagships have. I am guessing one of those things is going to annoy a lot of buyers and if you don't care about any of that stuff you're going to get a really good phone but if you look at the competition-especially similarly priced competition-the Pixel 2 and the Pixel 2 XL don't really separate themselves that much. So I said in the beginning I would answer if I was going to buy these phones and I think I would probably sit this generation out of the Pixel line. The sacrifices of expandable storage, wireless charging and the rest that I mentioned I can get with other similarly priced flagships. So the Pixel line, is it for you, are you going to pick one up? Are you disappointed? I want to know why you're picking one up and why you are not.

Leave it in the comments down below. We will pin a few comments to the top and we will change them up so if you guys have a good reason let us know. Give the give thumbs up, we always appreciate it. Until next time, I am Jon Rettinger from TechnoBuffalo.

Source : Jon Rettinger