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what's up guys lon here from Android authority and how does the best that Google has to offer stack up to the best from Samsung this is the Google pixel XL versus the Galaxy s7 edge the pixel XL is arguably one of the hottest Android phones on the market right now and it's the first smartphone that is entirely under Google's control it's also the first phone that Google is very serious about selling to the masses and its price tag puts in direct competition with Samsung's s7 edge and Samsung is a company that definitely knows a thing or two about selling a lot of phones aesthetically these two phones share a lot of the same materials but they look and feel completely different what the pixel excel you have what is basically an all metal unibody design with the exception of the glass window on the back there's no question here that the build quality is top-notch and is exactly what you would expect from Google but there's no denying that it looks a lot like the iPhone and the pixel also looks quite generic in comparison to Google's previous Nexus phones which always had a very unique appeal to them much of the generic feel of the pixel stems from the front and the empty bottom chin and if you didn't know this was a pixel phone you'd be hard-pressed to figure out what this phone was just by looking at the front with the s7 edge you have a design that is much more flashy and eye catching and ever since Samsung made the switch to a glass and metal design they've done a really great job of refining this design in a relatively short amount of time with a smooth metal frame and that curved edge glass on both the front and the back it's one of the most comfortable feeling phones that you will ever hold but this mostly glass design also makes it feel very slippery in the hand and very hard to keep clean from finger prints even though the s7 edge has been on the market for quite a few months now the engineering that went into its design is still pretty incredible the pixel XL and s7 edge share the same 5.5 inch screen size but due to the curved glass and small top and bottom chin the s7 edge is significantly shorter and narrower than the pixel XL and it really makes a huge difference in how these two feel in the hand in terms of their size the 5.5 inch display on both the pixel and s7 edge are using Super AMOLED technology with quad HD resolution and these are by far the two best displays you can get on a smartphone right now they look absolutely gorgeous they're sharp vibrant and outdoor visibility is not an issue on either one watching videos playing games and browsing the web all look fantastic on these screens and because they're super amoled you're also getting those inky deep blacks superb viewing angles and a high contrast ratio the big difference here of course is that you're dealing with an entirely flat screen on the pixel whereas on the s7 edge you have curves along the edges and besides allowing Samsung to make the phone smaller these curved edges also come with some software benefits you can swipe inwards from the edge for shortcuts to a bunch of useful things like apps your favorite contacts the weather sports scores and a whole lot more Samsung also take advantage of the AMOLED screen by giving the s7 edge and always-on display feature that can display the clock calendar and notifications with the pixel XL you have the latest Snapdragon 820 one chip and four gigs of ram and performance on the pixel XL is easily the best we've ever seen on an Android phone it really goes to show what Google is capable of doing when they have control of both the hardware and the software obviously having the latest Snapdragon chip and pearce stock Android helps a lot here but this phone rarely ever skips a beat the animations and transitions are consistently moving at a fluid 60 frames per second and it has excellent touch response which makes the whole experience feel even more snappy on the s7 edge you have the Snapdragon 820 and the same four gigs of ram and performance here is also quite good you will notice some slight hiccups and frame drops more often you would on the pixel but generally it's still very fast and has held up well since its release they both support Vulcan natively which means you're going to get much better graphics and gameplay with Vulcan supported games and if you're a big mobile gamer these phones are both perfect for it you'll find fingerprint sensors on both of these phones with the pixels being on the back and the s7 is on the front embedded in the home button there's pros and cons to the placement of both so it's really a matter of personal preference but they are both very accurate and fast to unlock I will say that I do personally prefer the pixels fingerprint sensor a little more simply because I don't have to press it down in order for it to start unlocking there's a few benefits on the s7 edge that you won't find on the pixel XL with the pixel you don't have a micro SD card slot like you do on the s7 and will have to rely on the phone's internal storage or the cloud the pixel also does not carry the same ip68 dust and water protection of the s7 it is IP 53 but this only protects the phone from light dust and sprays of water and it's not meant to be fully submerged in water another feature that the s7 edge has is wireless charging and while google has included wireless charging in some of their Nexus phones in the past they unfortunately chose not to include it for the pixel phones some people may not care about either of these features but these are important to you the s7 is the better option as far as battery life goes these two phones have some of the biggest batteries we've seen on flagship Android phones this year you have a 34 50 milliamp hour battery on the pixel XL and a 3600 milliamp hour battery on that sub edge if you're looking for Android phones that easily last all day the pixel XL and SM Edge definitely offers some of the best battery life you can get on an Android phone right now I consider myself a pretty heavy user since I do like to do a lot of mobile gaming music streaming and YouTube watching on my phone and if these phones can last my personal usage all day then I have no doubt they can make it through a full day for those of you who don't do these things on your phone as often the biggest advantage that Google made device has and always will have is in the software with the pixel XL you've got Android 7.1 nougat which brings a lot of new enhancements and you're also getting some exclusive pixel phone features like the pixel launcher and Google assistant we've already covered nougat pretty extensively in previous pixel videos we're getting all the usual nougat features like the revamp notifications direct reply multi window support dough's on the go and because this is 7.1 you're getting some additional features like the long press of apps to bring up a contextual menu and a reboot option of course with the s7 edge you have Samsung's usual TouchWiz interface which is still currently on Android marshmallow it'll surely get updated too nougat eventually but it's hard to say exactly when that will happen even though this isn't running nougat you already get a lot of what nougat brings with TouchWiz like editable quick toggles multi window support a reboot option and a ton of other useful features that are specific to TouchWiz like Samsung's game launcher and a large collection of customizable themes with the cameras you have a twelve point three megapixel shooter with f 2.0 aperture and electronic stabilization on the pixel XL and a 12 megapixel F 1.7 aperture lens with optical image stabilization and very fast dual pixel autofocus technology on the s7 edge as far as features go samsung's camera app offers a lot more controls and setting whereas Google's camera app is much more simplistic and doesn't offer a ton of features or mana controls what really matters the most is how these cameras perform and picture quality is a complete toss-up between these two sometimes the pixel takes the better shot and other times the s7 takes the better shot one thing's for sure though is that if there are two cameras battling for the number one spot as the best camera on an Android smartphone it would definitely be these two they both take excellent photos with great detail color and sharpness I would say that the pixel is better in high contrast situations in terms of controlling highlights but the s7 is much better in bringing out details and dark shadowy areas so depending on what you're looking at in these photos you could easily flip-flop back and forth as to which one looks better in low light is where the difference is between these two cameras become a little more obvious what the pixel xlu how much more bloomie highlights when compared to the s7 and some of this does have to do with the halo effect that the pixel phones have been suffering from but hopefully this will be fixed when Google releases its software update you'll also notice that the noise and the pixels low-light shots are much more prominent and that's because Google's image processing doesn't do a whole lot of noise reduction on the s7 the noise reduction is very aggressive and this does make the noise a lot less noticeable but it causes the overall image to be much softer with less detail while on the pixel the detail and sharpness remain intact it's sort of a matter of picking your own poison you're either going to have more noticeable noise with better detail or softer noise with less detail so what smartphone is the better choice well for me personally the s7 edge is the more well rounded smartphone here it has a more unique and distinguishable design comes with extra hardware features like microSD wireless charging and ip68 dust and water resistance and Samsung's TouchWiz while very different from stock Android has continually gotten better the biggest advantage that you get with owning a pixel or any previous phone sold from Google is the guaranteed and timely updates in a clean stock Android experience while the pixel XL is a fantastic smartphone in its own right if Google had just added a few more key features it would have really put this phone over the top as always thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope you enjoyed this comparison between the pixel XL and the SM edge and if you did please give a thumbs up down below and also subscribe to the channel which is so down below if you haven't already and follow us on social media instagram twitter snapchat google+ all that good stuff will be linked down below and as always check our website for more in-depth coverage and record calm because we are your source for all things Android you