Google Pixel XL Review: The Android Phone I've Always Wanted! By Matthew Moniz

I'm Matthew K?niz- and this is the Google Pixel XL Google's, very first smartphone- that they've designed themselves, even though technically it was manufactured by HTC. This is Google's vision of a high-end smartphone. It's meant to take on phones like the iPhone, 7 plus and even Samsung's Galaxy S7 edge. Now this is the very first time. Google has completely ditched the Nexus branding. I know a lot of people are upset, but there's very good reason behind this.

If Google creates a high-end smartphone that they can optimize their software with the hardware, all this is going to do is push other Android manufacturers to create better products. So with that being said, here's my review of the pixel XL. So, let's start off with the design. The first thing you know is that the design of the Google Pixel is nice, but it's nothing innovative. In fact, the bezels are quite big, and a lot of people feel that the front of the phone actually looks a lot like an iPhone.

Now the bottom has no fingerprint scanner, it's actually on the back, and it works great. So it makes me wonder why the chin of the phone has such big bezels, but the width and the length of the phone are actually smaller than the iPhone 7 plus, and the edges, instead of being all round, are actually chambered making it much easier to hold in your hand. Now it's when you look at the phone from the back the design changes and to me, it looks very Google. You have the G logo on the bottom, with no other branding and at the top of the phone you have glass. That starts and ends just below the fingerprint sensor, there's also a rear facing camera, which is completely flush with the phone and, of course you have an audio jack at the top on the bottom.

There's two speakers, girls. Only one of them is an actual speaker. It's on the left side, and it's a lot better than let's say the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge of speaker, but it's obviously not as good as the speakers on the iPhone 7 plus the display on the pixel XL is 5.5 inches q HD, and it's AMOLED. The colors are fantastic, they're, vibrant and the screen gets very bright and bright enough for outdoors now he's a better than the Samsung Galaxy S7 edge. Well, I found the s7 edge to get a lot brighter and I found the colors to be a lot more vibrant.

Also, the pixel XL doesn't have an always-on display, but it has an ambient one. So every time you get a notification, the screen will light up and show you the notifications that came in now when it comes to performance. This is one area the pixel XL does better than any other Android smartphone out there for one it has the new Snapdragon 820 one chip and four gigabytes of RAM. So right out of the box, you have a ten percent performance increase due to hardware. After that, you also have software and hardware optimizations that Google is able to do because it designs the hardware themselves.

This is something the iPhone has always had and leg up on. Android you're, also getting a very clean and fine-tuned version of Android, there's no bloatware on the phone and there's no theming that other manufacturers put on their devices. But Google has included some of their own personal software experiences that you're not going to get on other Android phones and the first one is that you can now upload as many 4k photos from your smartphone to Google photos. So you have unlimited storage for all your photos on your device. On top of that, there's also a brand new 24/7 support feature where you can go into the settings: click on a tab and chat with a Google representative to get support on your smartphone.

You can also do it by phone, and they can take over your phone remotely and diagnose the problem. Now I did try to use it, but unfortunately, is not active yet, and I don't think it's going to be active until October 20th. Now, if you decide to buy this phone you're also going to notice that the launcher is going to look a lot different from the one on the Nexus 6p, this one has its own personal launcher. So the icons on the bottom for the home menu are a lot more refined, and they're rounded out, and on top of that, the Google search bar is no longer there. It's just a button that you press on, and then it'll extend.

You can go ahead and search for something, but the biggest feature that Google's promoting has to be its brand-new Google Assistant. Imagine this being Google now version 2.0, it's significantly better and a lot more accurate I use, Justin Trudeau as my example and was able to answer all of my questions. Who's, the Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau is Prime Minister of Canada, okay Google. How old is he 24 years old, okay, Google? What's his name of his kids, it's insane how much further ahead Google is in the AI war compared to every other manufacturer out there, especially when it comes to context. There's also some cool gestures.

You can do on the phone for one. You can double tap the power button to quickly get access to the camera, so I put this up against the Galaxy S7 edge, and it's really fast, but just slightly slower than the s7. On top of that, you can twist your wrist to switch cameras when you're in the camera application and the last one is a new moves feature that allows you to use your finger on the fingerprint scanner to scroll up or down in terms of battery life. I was easily getting a full day of use before needing a charge. I would usually come home and before bed I'd end up with about 10 to 50 percent battery life.

Before going to sleep now as a better than the Galaxy S7 edge, no, the Galaxy S7 edge has a bigger battery, but the 3450 William battery and this one is fine to get you through the entire day. Now, for those of you who carry us, I got around three-and-a-half hours of screen on time before needing a charge, there's also fast charging, so you can top it up quickly, but obviously there's no wireless charging, since the back of the phone is made of metal. And finally, let's talk about the camera. This is one thing: Google has been promoting hard because it has a 12 megapixel sensor on the back and according to DXO mark, it is the best camera on a smartphone today, now I always take DXO marks results with a grain of salt just because I find that their results don't take real life into consideration. With that being said, the pixel XL definitely sits at the top 3 I, don't think it's number 1 I think it sits between the iPhone, 7 plus and the s7 edge, so you're not going to get as natural photos as the iPhone 7 plus, but they're not going to be as saturated or as warm as the Galaxy S7.

So if you like, a nice combination of both cameras, that's what the pixel XL is going to give you now. One area that really shocked me with the pixel XL is how good the image stabilization is. There's no optical image. Stabilization is using software, but I think is also using the gyroscope or the accelerometer to help stabilize the image in terms of stabilization. Overall, it definitely does the best job out of every smartphone that I've used, but the picture quality in video is not nearly good as the iPhone 7 plus all right.

So here are my closing thoughts. The pixel Excel pretty much nails everything I want in an Android smartphone. It has a good display, good battery life, a great camera and a fantastic software experience. However, I think it falls short when it comes to the design as I feel. The bezel should be a lot thinner for a premium smartphone in 2016 I also feel for the price point.

This phone should have been at least water-resistant or have dual stereo speakers. So here's the bottom line- the Google Pixel XL- is one of my favorite smartphone to 2016 so far, and that's because Google's been able to optimize the software to work with its hardware because they design the phone. Now this is offer the best Hardware experience. I, don't think so. There are other manufacturers doing a better job such as Samsung.

But if you want the best software experience on good Hardware, then I definitely think you should take a look at the pixel XL, so that wraps up my review of the pixel XL I'm, just finally excited that Google is creating its own hardware. Now, because all it's going to do is push other Android manufacturers to create better hardware as well. So what do you guys think of the pixel XL? Let me know in the comments below and don't forget to subscribe, because I'm going to be comparing this to the iPhone 7 plus and the Galaxy S7 edge in the near future. Thanks again for watching this video, if you're new to the channel subscribe and as always I will see you in the next video.

Source : Matthew Moniz