Google Pixel 2 XL Review By TWiT Tech Podcast Network

This is true pixel times so part a where should we start on the pixel party you had. How long have you had your pixel 2x? Oh, I've had my pixel, 2xl, and apparently I have it in the other room, so I polish, all right, like I'm, probably bad, no, no ?, now three weeks out yeah, so I've had my in one week. So a couple of things to say. First, all the reviews talked a lot about two things screen burn-in and the LG panel. They said and it's not as good as a Samsung panel. There remember and Google said: okay well, we're going to respond in two ways: one we're going to extend the warranty to two years, the applet for free yep and which is nice to have a two-year warranty to we're going to release an update which they did yesterday, at least on my phone.

Okay, that fixes some problems, and I'm going to show you the biggest change in the update. It's in the display settings and under advanced. If you've got a pixel phone, you should absolutely look at colors. They now have a setting for natural, which is how it came, and in fact, if I show you the natural. This is when I first saw your phone said.

Oh, that's so washed out, yeah I wasn't I thought that they would say it's more natural. That's the word they use. You know we get used to a more saturated display right with phones like Samsung. It's funny, that's the thing is I was comparing it to Samsung on the iPhone 10 because hit. If you hit saturated it's so funny, it looks exactly like Samsung phone.

It is exactly is appealing to me as the Samsung Note 8, maybe not quite as good as screen, but a pretty darn good screen. It's very fast. Furthermore, it's you know. Furthermore, it's got all the bells and whistles of all the high-end flagship phones like the snapdragon 835 and all of that and I think the screen is fine. I have not seen any burning in my weekend.

You haven't seen any in yours at all. You know if I did I wouldn't know how to I wouldn't to find it. It hasn't appeared in your know, while watching video or anything like that and there's never a time when I'm removing those navigation buttons to see behind this is where I want to put a little of a myth with bloggers, tech, blog, reviewers. First, they've got to get out there as fast as possible. Right.

They will often do a review in one day. I love it that you are not willing yet to say avert 1 plus 5t, because you haven't had it long enough right now. What would I base it on, but there's such competition among tech bloggers that they often come out in a day or two yeah, because there's that rush to be the first, because if you're, the first people are still eager to find out about, you know, find out information find content on that coverage. So if you're the first you get those early visits, yeah and I, don't think it's fair to users, because you're, not really getting the experience. So we buy our phones, both Base and I, bought our phones, and we use them for a week or two, and we really give you kind of ongoing experience.

I have to say the screen it. Maybe it's not quite as beautiful as the no date which is the leader or the iPhone 10, but it's more than adequate, and I love the pure Android notice, by the way I'm using action launcher I'm, not using missile launcher, but I love. This phone I think it's a great phone. I love the Panda, the black and white, with the arm yeah, but looks nice I. Think it's nice styling compared to just the all-black by the way I do have Thank You, Jerry.

This nice metal. Soft touch finish is nice is robust. It means because it's metal there's no wireless charging, I'm going to ding them for that, and I'm sad to say: there's no gosh, darn it headphone jack. It doesn't on the light. Furthermore, it doesn't ship with type-c headphones, but it does ship with the type-c.

Dongles I can use your headphones with it yeah and, of course, they're encouraging a huge used, their new Bluetooth headphones. A Pixel Buds, we'll talk about that in a second just like iPhones, encourage you to use air pods right. So this has now become Apple and you know their thing and Google and their thing yep, I, I, think compared to the iPhone 10 Google's fingerprint reader is more reliable. It works every time. I find that the face ID on the iPhone 10 sometimes doesn't work at night.

It doesn't work in some of the situations I'm in I'd find myself at least once a day entering the pen. The fingerprint reader is quick, reliable and works. Every time plus I can have somebody else's fingerprint on there, which is nice, for you know your spouse, for instance, if you right give them access to your phone. That's a really nice feature. You can't do that with a face.

I'd you have to it's. One person in one person also get a little of swipeable actions on the fingerprint yeah I. Don't know if you ever use that, but I don't, but it's its there and since your finger naturally falls on that part of the phone. When you pick it up, that's what I do like the squeeze feature. Let me I cannot get into the squeeze feature.

See that's personal right. I could turn it on or off the idea that you squeeze the bottom of the phone and that launches the assistant, and it's a very quick and easy thing to do as you pull the phone out of the pocket, see she's already listening to me and if I had given her a command, she would be doing something with it and transcribing what, but it's just very natural. If you have the phone in your pocket and you are sorry about all the rattling on the mic, and you pull it out you've already squeezed it, it's kind of a natural, so I well I keep waiting for it to become second nature. To me to do that I'm sure at some point it will because I know when, when you start getting into new ways new, you know it's, you have to, learn it yeah. You have to learn it.

You have to train yourself to think about assistant in this case, as that being the way that you, some in it, but I'm just so used to I'm just so used to the voice command. Furthermore, you still say that, okay, you know who yeah not gonna, not gonna, doing that yeah anyways I love the always-on display. This is something Sleds screens have had both on Samsung and other saying it. By the way it will show you, notifications, I have that turned off, but it will show you notifications. It will show my name and address on this, and this is a new feature which I really like.

If you turn it on, it will identify any songs that are playing ambient, and it works. It works so crazy. Well, almost to the point, so an app that I brought on the all about Android few weeks ago is called now playing history, and it will keep a record of all the songs that ever attend school. But here let me play put yours down and let me just see if it recognizes this song I'm playing here, go ahead. Well, while we're listened, okay- and you don't have to do anything- it just does right there you go see, it recognizes, write it down at the bottom, so right, yeah dragon, isn't that cool, yeah yeah, so there's an app that will keep track of everything.

You've heard called now playing history, you install it runs in the background, and it keeps a log of everything that this identifies now. This is what I find fascinating about. This feature. I'm going, and so I know that this feature has something to do with like a digital fingerprint, an audio fingerprint alright music in its database, is stored on the phone, so it recognizes right, um, a friend or a friend of Alan Android. The show tweeted me to say that he went to a Lady Gaga concert and at the end of the Lady Gaga concert, checked now playing history and almost the entire set list has logged there and I.

Don't know if that says something about Lady Gaga's live shows about how they're very close to recorded or whether that's pretty smart enough to figure it out. That is really cool. Now playing history, I'm going to get I, didn't I didn't expect it's a minor thing, but it's kind of a neat thing and I like it that it works. And how often are you somewhere where you go I want to know you don't want to phone out, and do you know launch that you can do it with a system that automatically now, but I like it? It is also helping you identify song as you really hate, yeah right. Never one go I like the mostly Beta list display, as you mentioned, and now has front-facing speakers.

Yep I have to say it. You heard it doesn't sound that good. In fact, I wouldn't say it sounds any better coming out of the front than it sounds on the iPhone 10 coming out on the bottom in the front. So all phone speakers sound pretty timid and creepy yeah, absolutely yeah you're polishing up some people. Yes, that thing some people like it.

If that's something you're looking for, it's got its front facing left and right speakers and I guess when you're watching a movie yeah, it's kind of nice, you, you know it gets stereos nice, but at the same time, I've gotten really used to the bottom firing speakers, because when I Drive around my stereo doesn't work, so I put it in my cup holder and that bottom firing in the upholders, and it makes it really loud, a little tip for you, 8:35 Snapdragon, 4, gigs of ram a 64, gig or 128 gig storage. I find really 64 is enough. Unless you have a lot of music Tigers on there and let's talk about the camera, I think without a doubt. This is the best camera phone on the market. Even and it only has one sensor- doesn't have the two lenses that a lot of other phones do Google's using a new kind of there's.

There's some of your pictures, a new kind of by the way that's portrait, portrait, modems, yeah, a lot of them. I use portrait mode and I that I've actually grown to really like the portrait mode on this device, even though I know that it's purely like it's not using any extra camera well, but remember all that it can split the, so it's using dual pixel technology, so it is getting a stereo picture, and they are able, with software look at that. That is a fantastic picture. Yeah, I'm really happy with it. The way that the Coca bouquet and the back has dropped out.

Even the selfie cam could do it yeah and that's and that's a big feature. I think you know I have to say those dams are to get to good. Now it's embarrassing I'm, going to smear Vaseline on my front camera. Look at that, and then you got a little live photo action right so now, Google can't Google's camera on the pixel is great because it's a great camera. It's also great, because if you take a lot of pictures, you get some really cool features.

You get those live photos, so you were limited stories a couple of frames before and after this, and you get unlimited storage, I'm good. As I saw, it was like till 2022 or something yeah now they're putting a date on it yeah. This was interesting, so I wanted went to a concert. Last night was acoustic set with a couple of artists that I really liked, and one thing that's also really great about this camera. The video camera is the stabilization that it does so you know I'm sitting in the chair.

This is handheld. This is handheld, looks like it's on a tripod right, so you just sit there minor little adjustments here and there if you really move, but the software inside is adjusting it, it's probably cropping off a little of information or to do it, but you end up with what looks like a tripod shot Wow for the full four and a half minutes. Ow and I love the quality of the camera. There 's's nothing much more to say about it, except that this in terms of I, think in accuracy of color the dynamic range, the result that I call it. Sometimes it's called the I camera, the picture IQ, the image quality I call it the like ability.

I feel like these are really fat, whose is this yours yeah. That's a tough one, that's a little dark! Yet nice, it was in the dark spot. I think it did a pretty good job. I'm very happy with this camera. Furthermore, I think the images that are fantastic.

So what else can we say about this? The battery life I'm consistently going to bed with 30 or 40 percent, and you're getting better battery life on the 2xl than you would on the -? It's its a large of agarbathis yeah battery. So it's definitely the choice. If that's a big importance to you, 35 20, William hour battery yeah I think this is an it says. Sixty-five six percent now but I'll have no problem getting through the rest of the day. Yeah, I would say 18 or 19 hours pretty consistently and the way I use it.

Your mileage might vary it is. It is a six-inch P OLED, which is an LG OLED quad HD 2880 by 1440. That's good battery life. For such a high resolution screen anything else, we want to say about it. I think this is a great phone.

I'm um, if you need an Android phone I would say, go with Google only because you're guaranteed that the updates in Google announced that they're going to do that for at least three years, I haven't feeling people are gonna, be a little gun-shy if they follow. You know a lot of the tech, blogs and, and this network, especially because of the display, there's been a lot of hookah around the display. It's worth it to just get it and see how you feel about it. Right live with it for a week. You've got a return policy if you drop buy directly from Google.

There's no reason not to I feel like the benefits. Far outweigh any of the drawbacks, and I've gotten really used to the display. I think it doesn't matter, it was fabulous display. I, couldn't tell you, I can't tell you how happy I am with this is I, especially worried going in and unhappy. If you turn that saturate, if you want it to look like an OD turn the saturated setting on and that's an update that just came out, I think you're going to be very happy, and I don't have any burning I, don't know what the people are talking about.

There is one thing everybody should be aware of. This is an OLED issue that others have complained about. If you do off-angle viewing on these screens, they turn they tend to turn blue you're not going to see everything guys are back right, yeah a little if you pull your app drawer up, that might be a good indicator, and so that's great it's like grace, but here I might be able to show you with my yeah. Here we go. Here's! Oh here's, a white, so watch! So it's its white when it's even that looks a little and then, as you tilt it up a little, you see that blue.

It doesn't bother me that saw faxes viewing. Remember the LC did TFT LCD's, you couldn't see, you couldn't even see him, and they got that faxes. It doesn't bother me in use in principle it kind of does only because these are expensive phones that do that, all. Let's do that a little sometimes I feel like you, don't see it as much as you do here. Even the iPhone 10, even though that I've phoned in it a little yeah, although this is the best screen I've ever seen, but that's another matter all right, so that's the pixel to excel.

In my opinion, high recommendation, Android phone completely agree.

Source : TWiT Tech Podcast Network