Best $100 Smartphone in 2021 - Google Pixel XL Review! By StevealiciousTech

Hey, what's up fellas, I'm blessed female fan, Steve Alicia is here, and sometimes we get wrapped up in the newness of these budget devices, whether it be the Poco phones or some of the Motorola offerings or the Nokia offerings, and no one's saying that those aren't good devices. However, if you're willing to go back in the catalog a little and run back a few years to some older flagships, you can run into even some better hardware for a fraction of the cost enter the Google Pixel XL. I think for my money, the best a hundred dollar smartphone you can buy in 2021 we're going to talk about it today on this edition of Steve, Alicia's tech, and we're back as always. Thank you so much to all the new subscribers inching ever so close to 3 000. If you've been here for a bit, if you enjoy the videos go ahead and tussle that subscribe button, it certainly means a lot to me happy Valentine's Day. I hope you're having a wonderful one as wonderful as it can be without steve-alicious as your valentine.

That is, let's talk about the Google Pixel XL and what you can actually pick up for a hundred bucks hardware, wise you're, getting a premium device. I know people got on it a little at the time for the glass and the aluminum body after having the mix of the two. I don't have a problem with it at all. It feels premium in the hand. It's nice, it's a thin device.

Furthermore, it's a lighter device without feeling cheap and that's an art form that apparently, we've lost Samsung. You know for a while, listen I'll give for a while. I was one of those people that said gee fellas it. There comes a point when the device doesn't have to be any lighter and thinner anymore and Samsung with the s21 ultra is like we got you FAM, and they basically get it, get you a Buick, 230 grams and the thing's this thick, and they don't even give me the headphone jack back. So you get light premium build and a headphone jack with the Google Pixel XL for your 100 bucks and also a feature on here design wise.

These companies seem to go back and forth between a squared off edge and a rounded edge for the pixel XL. They give you both squared off on the sides just enough to give your fingers the pads, a positive grip, which is quite nice, but then, when you go ahead and lay it in your hand, it's curved, so it's not digging into the back of your fingers in the front of your fingers. It's great more people should do that, bring that design back. I went with the blue because I'm a fancy boy, but you could get it for actually a little cheaper link will be in the description Amazon, where you can get it with that 90 day, warranty that they offer on these devices black or silver. If you go with those, you could get it for even less about 88, but I thought the blue was quite fun.

It reminded me of the Lucia days. What's great is that you get all the pixel functionality that you'd expect from their software from the stock version of android. You get the call screening, which is still one of the best features in smartphones period ended all those spam and robocalls you're good to go. If it's somebody legit, they talk back, and you could go ahead and open it up. You get the bubble for the phone call which I quite like you get the little fun customizations that they have on the home screen and the bar depending on the holiday this one.

Obviously, you could see for Valentine's Day, which is quite nice, and what's great, is this saved my impression of the snapdragon 821? If you had a s7, a s7 stop be a Samsung Galaxy s7 stopped being usable two years ago: nothing but lag. It was a mess and that was on android 8. Then you had the lg g6, which you could barely run. Android 8 a total mess. So I never really liked the 821, because I'm thinking all these phones are struggling with it, pixel performance is great on it.

You wouldn't notice it. I was able to use this the entire week and I put off doing this video because you know what I don't want. I didn't want to stop using it. Furthermore, I put another sim in I'm using it for other stuff. Now, just so, I can keep carrying it around because I like it that much.

I don't feel like I'm missing anything from the higher flagships, which is another conversation, okay, 100 devices, don't feel like I'm missing anything and then 1200 for some of these other things, but you get that nice stock clean version of android, which definitely does help the performance at four gigs of ram. So not exactly the end of the world, and I know I get on pixel devices a lot on this channel. If you watch you're, saying gee, I'm surprised you're, even using the pixel at all, but look when I get on pixel devices. It comes from a place of disappointment in my heart. It's because I wanted to own them.

I wanted to get excited about one. I wanted it to make sense for the money that I'd actually be investing into the hardware and for a while it hasn't made sense at all. Furthermore, I had a friend who had a pixel 2 XL, which I liked. Furthermore, I thought that was a really great cool device. Furthermore, I'm thinking all right, I'm going to be all in on the pixel 3 and then the pixel 3 comes out.

The XL has that ridiculous notch. I know what you're saying: okay boy just pick up a pixel 3. , you don't have to deal with the notch yeah, but then you don't get the quad HD display. Then it had four gigs of ram at that price point. When the competitors were already at six and eight, then the whole mess with the pixel four and that design disaster was solely on the top that then they've just written off.

Pixel 5 is better they're going in the right direction. So I want to start getting excited about pixel phones again, and I saw I wanted to give this one a shot and it really really really makes it work and the thing that we miss on all this stuff is. This: has the best camera system that you're going to get on a 100 smartphone period ended? It might be the best camera system you're going to get on a 200 or 300 smartphones? You still get the computational photography and because they haven't changed the lens on the pixel phones for 100 years, I'm pretty sure they're still using this one or a variation. I think it's a pixel 2 one, but it's still 12.3 megapixels. You get night sight on it, believe it or not, which is not something that I would have expected.

You could see here the great photo that this is when it was snowing, sharp detail, nice, it's not the best lighting. This was a cloudy day, but it's still doing well here takes a good cat photo, as you can see here as well, not missing a beat with that. So photography is important for you and the budget's tight, which I don't can't blame you for, and you're looking at gee. What has the best camera at 200, 250 300 picks up a pixel, XL 100 bucks, and you could do a heck of a lot worse? So we're gonna look at some performance stuff here now gaming, it's going to be okay. Pok?mon was not an issue, I'm not saying it was perfect.

This is going on five-year-old device. So there were a couple hiccups, but you can see. I was still able to play the game. Just fine scrolling worked well, I was able to get through the OS. I was able to put any app that I have any functionality app that I really wanted on there with no issue whatsoever.

So I found that to be okay. Now, it's not all sunshine and rainbows. You are taking a couple l's, as the kids would say, compared to some of those newer budget devices, it's not as energy efficient as the snapdragon 662, which is kind of the comparable chipset you're getting about the same performance, and this is a five-year-old flagship chipset and that's a brand new one, but it's not flagship. Obviously so 662 is about what you're looking at now, because it's a smaller nanometer chip. You know when you get super technical, it saves on power the battery life.

This thing only has a 3 450 William hour battery, which was acceptable back in the day, totally fine, but now, even on these budget devices, you're getting five and six thousand William hour batteries, so you're to lose out there. Multi-Core performance obviously is going to hurt. This has four less cores, so you're not getting that, even though the gaming performance believe it or not, comes out a little stronger on these 800 series, even the 821 than it does on some of those 662 chips. So you could certainly do a lot worse there, but it's just we run into problems where we get caught up in gee. I need a new phone.

I need a brand-new device and this one I got wasn't a scratch on. It is really excellent condition and I'm someone who's. Definitely, if there's even a hint of a dent or something like that, I don't want anything to do with it when I'm paying that kind of money for a device. So I was really happy to see that this one was kept in good condition. I was able to grab it relatively cheap.

Like I said, the hundred bucks, and it's it served me well, and I was really surprised at the performance uh if your budget, if you're in that hundred dollar price range, I'm telling you go ahead, pick one up. Unfortunately, as far as google is concerned, this phone is fredo. You know, I don't want to know you and what you do. That's basically you're done it's October.19 was the last update that you and you're not getting anymore, but it's running, android 10, and it's running android 10 well and which still gives me pause, because you had the Samsung Galaxy s7 that couldn't even run android 8, let's run android 10 and doing it in a way, that's usable in 2021, which is absolutely phenomenal, absolutely phenomenal. So I'm going to leave the link in the description for the Amazon renewed, like I said, take advantage of the 90-day thing.

If it comes with damage that you don't like you return it get another one, and I'm going to start using the prices are good, I'm going to start using them a lot more than I use eBay and the problem with eBay is that I like to get these phones in good condition. So you look for new, and you look for open box, but even if it's listed as new in open box, it's refurbished and the problem is you're, paying a premium you're paying a premium for something that doesn't exist, you're paying a premium for new inbox you're, paying a premium for open box, and it's not either of those things it's refurbished. So if I'm going to get refurbished, I at least want that backstop of the 90 days when, if it comes in, and it's scratched in a way, I don't like, or it's chipped, or it's dented or something like that. Could you send it back and say: hey send me another one? I don't have to worry about it, because that's really where we are with some of these stuff on things one bay. You know the super older devices, the blackberries I'm still going to be one bay, but those mid-tier two and three and four-year-old phones, I'm gonna, give Amazon renewed a chance, so link will be in the description.

But let me know what you think if you had one of these back in the day, and you liked it fun. Color, nice design yeah. So what it's got some you know everyone wrapped up in the bezels. Personally, I like the aspect ratio, is it 16x9, yeah 16x9 aspect ratio which I personally like on devices I like viewing content on there. I, like it, a little taller for games and stuff like that.

So I like that I like having bezels, I don't care, you know you hold it like this. You at least got your place for your thumbs when you're watching you just focus on the screen. You know I don't need these infinity displays falling off the side. I think it's all stuff. That's just nonsense.

Give me one of these. You got quad HD, OLED panel, nice hardware. If you need it backup phone, something like that, it's just a phone for your kid or whatever it is, or you're just looking for a budget. You don't need anything. Fancy hundred bucks pick one up if you made it this far like comment subscribe all that fun stuff until next time have that stevelicious day.

Source : StevealiciousTech