A brief tour of Google's Pixel 2 XL- BBC News By BBC News

Last year, Google brought out its first branded high-end smartphone, the pixel, designed to show off all that's best in its Android operating system. Now we've got pixel to what's different. Well one key thing: the screen looks bigger. It goes further to the edge in basically the same real estate. Other key thing right at the heart of Google's pixel phones is the Google Assistant, the smart assistant and now there's a quicker way to get to it. You could talk to it, you could tap on it now you can just squeeze the phone and up it comes Google.

What's so special about this now I, don't think I've seen a new high-end smartphone, launched in recent years, where the makers haven't claimed that it's got the best camera ever and Google is no exception. They say the pixel 2 takes amazing photos, particularly in low-light, and one feature they're really boasting about is the ability to take a portrait with the background blurred out of focus, beautiful, portraits now the key thing here, because you can get that feature on a lot of phones these days? Is that they're doing it with just one lens? They say they're using a lot of clever software and machine learning to be able to do that with just one camera. Let's give it a go. So what's the reason for not having two cameras on the back, like many phones well, Google says it allows it to pack more in get more battery life in a bigger battery, but there's one thing missing from this phone: a headphone socket it's gone. You have to plug your headphones in here, where you charge it.

So why does this matter? Well, it's Google, saying it's determined, finally to master hardware and combine it with software in the way that Apple has with the iPhone, which has turned out to be such a stunning business, one sign of that. It's spent over a billion dollars a few weeks ago, acquiring two thousand HTC smartphone engineers. So far, though, the results not stunning, just not 0.5%, of the global smartphone market accounted for by the first pixel. They say they're going to do better time around you.

Source : BBC News