Google Pixel 2 Initial Review By 9to5Google

Last year's Google pixels replace the Nexus line as the defect flagships for stock Android purists, and they ended up being some of the best phones on the market. So naturally we were excited to get our hands on their sequels. Our full reviews are coming soon, but I've spent the weekend with the smaller pixel too, and I've got some thoughts. I'll say right away that I'm, not a fan of this phone's hardware. Just like last year's pixel, the pixel 2 is made of aluminum, which I generally like the feeling of more than glass, but the coating that sits on top of it makes it feel sort of classic II and well just not like an HTC built phone still I, like that. It's a matte finish and the coating actually covers up the antenna lines which is kind of nice.

What isn't nice, though, is a huge downgrade in tactile response from the power and volume buttons which were super click last year, and now they're, just mushy further contributing to the feeling of an overall lower build quality? Oh, and you know how a ton of people complained about the iPhone like bezels on the original pixel. Well, it's almost like HTC took that as a challenge and made them even worse. On the pixel too, on the bright side, you do get front-facing speakers out of it, and they get nice and loud with a clear mid-range. So there's absolutely zero bass response real quick with some smaller details, squeezing the phone to launch Google Assistant is weird. Haptic feedback is pretty good, but not as good as the LAB 30 or iPhone 8.

The display is also not as good but 1080p actually looks great at a screen size. It's also very comfortable to use in one hand, and I'm delighted that it's finally water-resistant, though wireless charging would be great for next year, all right enough dumping on the hardware. It's time, I, look at the real reason you would buy this phone, the software, the pixels, you run it's a slightly tweaked version of Oreo with some nice new fonts and that's power menu and finally, a black themed, system-wide boot uptime is ridiculously fast, and so is the setup process. Furthermore, it automatically put all of my apps in the same place: I have them on my pixel XL and Google signs into every app for you. Furthermore, it's really great.

Of course, the search bar has been moved from the top of the home screen down to the bottom, which doesn't look as good in my opinion, but it's much more accessible. Now you also get a nice new collection of animated, wallpapers, and I've been enjoying this one of earth which helps take advantage of the AMOLED display. Now the camera was one of the best parts of last year's pixel, so we had pretty high hopes for the camera in the pixel ? I haven't had much time to take photos of landscapes or test out its video performance. Yet, but I really wanted to spend some time with its new portrait mode, since it only uses one lens and machine learning, and it's actually really, really good. Like all artificial both effects, this one isn't perfect and there's the occasional stitching error, especially around hair, but more often than on any other phone I've used the pixel to gets it right.

On the first attempt, some shots look absolutely stunning coming from a phone and even the front camera does portrait mode, which adds a whole new level of flair to your selfies I. Also like that, you can take motion stills directing the camera now, and they automatically import into the motion stills app best of all. You can view portrait photos and motion stills exactly the same way from a non pixel phone like this LAB 30 through Google photos. It's still a little early for me to comment on things like battery life and software bugs, but I can at least say that so far, I haven't had an issue with either I still don't love the hardware, but the camera alone is already making the pixel too hard for me to put down again, our full review is coming soon, but if you preorder ? pixel -. Hopefully this video gives you an idea of what you can expect and if you preorder ? to excel we've got another early impressions, video with Ben's thoughts.

Thanks for watching everybody, and we'll see you next time.

Source : 9to5Google