Gadgetory

so here we are with a brand new pixel and the pixel 2 follows up on the original by kind of adding to the formula on a phone that was supposed to be the official home for Android and it was Google's first foray into the hardware game and there's something that I really want to emphasize when it comes to my review of this the pixel 2 XL and the pixel 2 it's the fact that it's not really about how many features you're getting and the sheer number of things that you can do with the phone it's more about the experience and if you will the texture I've drawn the design is the first thing you're going to notice about this device it is immensely better than last year's pixel which had a very slippery metal and that large glass panel on the top that people weren't really all that sure about this year the glass panel is minimized it only takes up maybe a fifth of the top of the device and then below it is a metal body that actually has been treated to have a texture to it it's not just smooth metal and it grips very well in the hands making it a lot less slippery than last year's pixel which really helps in the handling Department it's one of those tiny changes that Google put into this phone that make all the difference so we think these phones look pretty damn good and if you want to protect your investment and keep the phone from scuffing from general wear and tear then you might want to invest in these minimal cases they are incredibly thin add no bulk to the device and if you look at this particular case it's a way to bring back the really blue color that we don't have in this year's generation of phones things kind of do change up when you get to the front of the device the pixel 2 looks a lot like a smaller Nexus 6p in that it is perfectly symmetrical and has quite a bit of room at the forehead and the chin above and below the screen for both of these devices the forehead and the chin how's the front facing speakers which is a great addition that proves to be really useful especially when gaming but unfortunately with all of this goodness so far there had to be a sacrifice and the main sacrifice that a lot of you out there will probably be calling this phone out on is the lack of a headphone jack losing the headphone jack means that using one's favorite headphones might be a little bit of a chore this time around we do suggest that you just keep the adapter connected to your favorite pair so it's always available but those few times when our Bluetooth wireless headphones may have run out of battery did proved to be a little bit troublesome especially when we didn't have our favorite wired earphones on hand one final thing to mention about the design here the sides are pressure sensitive that's kind of a fancy way for me saying that you can squeeze the device the squeeze feature is not entirely new and on the pixels they only activate Google assistance it might have been nice to have a different function for here that is user programmable but at least Google assistant is incredibly useful and if you are in Google assistance pretty constantly this is the best way to trigger it the smaller pixel 2 is obviously the easier to handle device but it does have a lower resolution at Full HD which might be a bit of a problem for those of you who are really into virtual reality on the other hand you do have the 18 by 9 aspect ratio display of the pixel to XL which comes in a quad HD resolution the main addition to these displays other than the 18 by 9 aspect ratio for the XL is the addition of an always-on display but there are a couple of issues when it comes to mainly the saturation and also a bit of the color reproduction on the pixel to XL even though these are OLED displays for whatever reason the saturation on the pixel to XL is a little bit dialed down you're not going to be seeing the kind of color reproduction that you might be used to on samsung devices where it's incredibly vivid instead you're gonna get a much more accurate display which is what Google is trying to remind everybody they were trying to do with this device but there is another problem here with the viewing angles it's been a long time since we've talked about viewing angles as a problem on a device but even when you move the device at a somewhat acute angle it doesn't even have to go that far you notice a cooling effect on all of the colors here almost like a blue tint now this is something that might really bother some users out there but giving them the benefit of the doubt we don't think that really too many people are going to be that bothered by this issue playing games watching videos and looking at the screen dead on when looking at media or anything that is colorful we really didn't notice that much of a difference when it came to the saturation the experience was still enjoyable so keep that in mind there might be some issues with the display but it's not really going to change your daily usage and this might not come as much of a surprise but performance has not been an issue with the pixel 2 and the pixel 2 XL you have everything that you would need inside of these devices including the snapdragon 835 4 gigabytes of RAM which is utilized beautifully by the optimized version of Android Oreo in here and you have different storage options depending on how much you pay for the device there's no SD card slot in here but it does help that google photos is included on here and it allows you to upload original resolution files whether they're photo or video so you can save up space pretty easily multitasking in particular gets high marks not only because of the multi window that we've enjoyed on this before but with picture-in-picture which is now a feature of android 8.0 not only are you able to use maps in the corner of your screen while you're doing other things you can also do that with YouTube which is what I've been doing the most the smaller pixel too obviously has the smaller battery but it does still get through a full day's work without any problems it just might have less screen on time than the pixel to excel in my case I've been getting pretty consistently five hours of screen on time on here with mildly heavy usage like I said before I have YouTube videos playing all the time and of course you can use the included charger for power delivery charging or you can use qc3 in order to top-up the battery when you need it the rest of the hardware is pretty much what you would expect - the headphone jack you have everything that you might need here including NFC and even IP certifications so that this phone can take a tumble or a dip without even breaking a sweat so as the story goes texture continues to be the name of the game for these pixels you're not getting a huge amount of features in these phones but all the stuff that you do get is not only optimized they also work incredibly well the performance is where it should be even though you only get four gigabytes of RAM and really the optimized version of Android makes all the difference in utilizing everything the pixels can offer which brings us to the cameras which is another really optimized part of the pixels now you're not going to get dual cameras on the back of this device you're only getting one lens however Google is really trying to optimize it as much as possible so that you can get the best quality photos right now you're watching footage full HD resolution footage from the front facing camera which is itself a wonderful performer right now I'm actually using it just on my vlogging rig and you can see that the quality is actually pretty great one thing I should mention though is that the audio you're hearing right now is coming from an external recorder and that's because the audio from the phone sounds like this it's not the best audio that we've heard might be one of the main source pots when it comes to recording video on these devices because there are a couple other things that have been added on like OAS and also a portrait mode on the front-facing camera audio is really just a small blemish on what is overall a pretty good package but using this camera as a vlogging rake has been pretty nice because the front-facing camera allows for pretty high quality video but of course you want to see what the rear camera looks like and there you go 4k video recording on the rear camera of the pixel - it does a good job of providing good quality video with a little bit of blotchiness and grain especially in low-light situations by the main source pod like I said already is the audio but if you want to talk about detail you definitely want to talk about the still images the camera application works pretty much the same way as it did in last year's pixel only there is a replacement lens blur is now portrait mode and yes this is a portrait mode that only uses one lens and it does not need to have a secondary zoom lens and it works on both cameras in either case it will take two pictures one with the artificial bouquet effect and one without it that way you can take your pick but the portrait mode does a really good job of actually cutting out the foreground subjects there were only a few times that we saw the cut be incorrect overall the portrait mode is going to be one of those crowd-pleasing features that selfie experts or rather selfie enthusiasts are going to really enjoy pictures in general have turned out really great with wonderful detail and good saturation that have been added in due to the always-on HDR plus mode there aren't really any manual controls to speak of here but this might be the best auto shooter that we have ever used essentially what the HDR plus mode does is it takes a bunch of photos at the same time then uses all of that data in order to create the best possible final product this is really useful even in low-light situations where the shutter doesn't even stay open for very long the shutter to file speed is still pretty high in low-light situations and it's just basically telling you just trust me I'll get you the photo you want so if you're a shutterbug and you're looking at the pixel - as your potential next device the rear camera got the enhancements that it should get after last year's pixel but it's really the front facing camera that puts the icing on the cake with that portrait mode that you can use for all of your selfies and finally let's talk about the software which but there really isn't a whole lot else that we can say other than this is the way Android was meant to be all of the different features that you get in Android 8 are over all practical and are things that we would use everyday like picture-in-picture there are a couple of other features that have been added in like the always-on display having a now playing feature that pulls from a database of songs so that when it can recognize that there is music playing it will be able to tell you what that song is so if now playing is displaying a song down here and you get into the phone it'll either give you a card that provides you with the name of the song if it's in the database or it would just send you to a Google search so you can find out for yourself and speaking of Google searches well we have google lens but it's not really all the way here yet google lens still has yet to make it to Google assistant but this is the way it works in Google Photos any photos that you already have in Google photos can be scanned maybe a bit of OCR text recognition and maybe a backwards image search and it will try to tell you what it is you're looking at it works maybe half of the time and some of the results were pretty impressive like when it read the text on my shirt and then it gave me a Google search leading me straight to the restaurant that I was reppin and as I've been alluding to this entire review it's really about the user experience of Android and the daily usage of this operating system that ultimately is its best when it's on a pixel the pixel to launcher for example is even cleaner than before and putting the search bar on the bottom of it makes it easy to access for all of those people who do Google searches all the time and then of course we have the squeeze feature which is the best way of getting to Google assistant from pretty much any part of the phone even when the screen is off so if you're looking at it from just a pure speck and feature standpoint then pixel to and the pixel to excel are going to fall just below all of the other flagships this year but that's not necessarily a bad thing because empirically it does lack a little bit compared to a note 8 or a V 30 if you're coming from a previous pixel then the story is nice and short here the pixel twos look better perform better shoot better and simply do better than the previous generation but especially if you're an Android purist and you prefer optimization over sheer numbers of features well then the pixel 2 is the best way of enjoying Android and it is definitely the way that Android was meant to be as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this review of the pixel 2 and the pixel 2 XL I kind of just wanted to gush you a little bit about how much I enjoy these devices because honestly they are a lot of fun and whether or not they are actually better than other flagships kind of depends on what your EADS are but if you're just looking for a smartphone that simply works and gives you the best version of Android well you don't really have to look any further than these two phones keep it tuned to Android authority and don't forget to check the description down below to find links to our Android 8 review to the minimal cases that I alluded to earlier and also to all of our great coverage over at and Jordan thority comm and of course you can subscribe to this channel if you haven't already so you can keep up with everything that we do here at Android Authority because we are of course your source for all things Android