Gadgetory

the latest and most official Google device is here but we've only had it for a few days total while we are able to draw a few conclusions about this device by now we want to continue testing it for a full review coming very soon but for now it's Joshua regard from Android authority what's going on everybody and this is our initial review of the Google pixel XL Google brings their own design sensibilities to the Android world and a phone that was built by them from the ground up the results are unfortunately pretty polarizing and we here at Android Authority are about a split as all of you are personally I have become kind of accustomed to what the Nexus brought to the table some pretty bare-bones looking phones that had particular quirks that really differentiated them there's one quark on the pixel and that's a panel of glass on the top third of the backing and while this does differentiate the pixel from other phones it also feels a little bit let's say safe and it's also not all that flashy and it just adds to what is overall an understated look that said the phone feels really sturdy and has a very significant heft to it and the sides have a very aggressive chamfer that add texture to the sides now with the smooth metal backing thankfully that chamfer will keep the phone from slipping around even though it does quite a bit already and there is a little bit more heft on the top and bottom portions of the device making it feel taller than it probably should have been that said however it still feels solid and with one hand you will have to perform some gymnastics to really get around now Google opted for AMOLED screens for the pixel phones and the smaller pixel comes in at 1080p resolution this one is a XL with 5.5 inches in the screen a quad HD resolution and everything looks pretty damn good on it a lot of YouTube videos were viewed in the last few days everything from animated shorts to daily vlogs and they all look wonderful at 720p resolution and above now this is the first phone to support the snapdragon 801 and it comes as no surprise that the pixel XL performs beautifully consider also that this is pure Android the streamlined and fully put together version by Google that is supposed to provide the pure experience now that's not to say that other Android devices lack in the speed Department there just seems to be a great deal of attention to detail that Google put into this phone in terms of the user experience transitions all look so smooth and going around all the elements is just a breeze and it feels like this is definitely the poster child for what Android should feel like we will be playing with more games and performing more tasks in the coming days especially with multitasking features but so far the pixel excel is a good poster child for the Snapdragon 820 1 now hardware might actually be a bit of a sore point for the Google so phones mostly because of storage now you're ready paying a hefty price for these phones and if you want 128 gigabytes for either of them you're going to pay even more now this case I have a 32 gigabyte device and with Final Fantasy games installed on here I only had half of that available for all the 4k recording I wanted to do now it is true that pixel owners will be able to upload at full resolution all photos and videos but having to find Wi-Fi and then allow the Google Photos app to clean up the camera folder these are steps that I just I'm not used to just yet sound is a welcome highlight for the pixel a phone that is supposed to take voice inputs at any time and as long as it's near enough to hear my voice it will pick it up and I can do any query or question for the Google assistant pretty easily so to that end this bottom mounted speaker which obviously won't be as good as let's say dual front-facing speakers actually does a really good job it just might be the best one of its kind and like I said it does a really good job of having you hear the Google assistant clearly for example ok Google how are you doing today I've had a great day I was just looking up some fun things to do a 30 450 million power battery and here actually does a pretty average to above-average job so far I've only had it for a few days but I have done some pretty aggressive use over the last couple of days in particular using GPS navigation a lot of music playing and of course using the Google assistant and to that end I was able to get about 16 hours with three and a half to four hours of screen on time definitely making it to the end of the day which brings me to an interesting change I noticed in my battery usage of course screen on time is really important but I found myself using audio more often simply because of the Google assistants after all when using the Google assistant you can get what's called a daily briefing now the daily briefing will have Google assistant just say good morning to you tell you the weather any calendar entries you have and then from there it can move straight into a somewhat podcast like player that plays a curated list of different news briefings from NPR or The Wall Street Journal on any given morning so far in the last three to four days I have been able to listen to NPR Wall Street Journal and tech news for about an hour to two hours so if you end up using the Google assistant especially for features like that you will see that Trick show up in your battery stats which brings us to the cameras now we have a rear-facing main camera with 12 point 3 megapixels @f 2.0 aperture any 4 facing unit shooting 8 megapixels now the cameras on here will look similar to that of the Nexus 6p but there are a few key enhancements here first of all the Google camera looks very similar to what you would pretty much expect from the Nexus from before and it has all of the different features you would expect panoramas along with photosphere lens blur and slow motion of 120 frames per second if at 1080p resolution HDR is now HDR plus a version of it that is actually pretty much always on if you have hdr+ on auto it will attempt to add some of those enhancements and pretty much every photo that you take and to that end hdr+ does a pretty good job of adding vibrance to the color while bringing down the highlights in particularly blown out areas which brings us to the main feature of the pixel XL that I at least am really excited for video stabilization essentially there's no optical image stabilization on this camera and it uses a software based stabilization that uses information from the gyroscope and you'll be able to see the change from stabilization off to stabilization on now one of the best parts about this is that the video stabilization can be used one recording in 4k which is not that common when it comes to Android devices the best part is that there's a lack of a jello effect that you will usually get with other software based stabilizations and even if the movements feel a little bit robotic they are much better than the alternative overall the camera has already been very impressive and I would say even at this early outset that it's better than most shooters out there we will continue to do testing and comparisons with other Android devices so we can really see where the pixel stands among the rest now unfortunately it is unclear whether this version of Android will make it to other non Google branded devices and that might be a shame because 7.1 is a delight to use mostly due to the Google assistant and if you've never used it before you should definitely check out Google a low and see if you enjoy it if you do imagine having that functionality baked into the very core of your smartphone now we will score this phone on its own merits but I have to bring you a thought I've had plenty of times over the last three to four days if the rest of Android didn't exist this phone would be one of the best thing to ever come out unfortunately the rest of the Android world does exist and there are plenty of devices out there that provide more for much lower price points but the other thought that keeps nagging at me is that the pixels so far seems to have damn near perfected the basics of an Android device something that plenty of other Android phones have inexplicably faltered at as always thank you guys very much for watching and I hope you enjoyed this initial review of the Google pixel excel this is our first review of this mostly because we only had a short time with it thus far and we wanted to do further testing on it to make sure that our conclusions definitely hold weight we will also do some comparisons so you might see some of those in our full review and you might get some second opinions because I'm not the only one here at AAA that has one of these phones stay tuned for that and even more about the Google pixel line of phones including this excel in my hand right here and you can stay tuned here by subscribing to our channel if you haven't already and remember to drop us some likes on these videos because we love to see those thumbs up from there stick around for even more about this and beyond in the world of Android because we are of course your source for all things Android