Gadgetory

this brand-new line of phones is kind of a big deal for a lot of different reasons and one of them is because of that big old G on the back it's Josh of regard from Android Authority what's going on everybody and this is a hands-on and first look at the Google pixel and pixel XF now for the purposes of this hands-on the google pixel will be the white phone that I'm using and the Google pixel XL will be the black version that I'm using there is a blue version of the phone but we did not get any time with that device there are a couple of photos you can see of it over at andrew authority comm and for the sake of argument the google pixel XL does have a larger 5.5 inch screen at quad HD resolution over the full HD screen of the Google pixel and of course it has a larger battery now you may have seen the Google assistant already on Google a low if you happen to be using that messaging service but now Google assistant is essentially what replaces Google now on tap in the Android iteration of new get that is found in the pixel phones these will be the first place and currently one of the only places that you can use Google assistant as the overarching software in these phones that said the software looks essentially what we expected it to with the launcher being the pixel launcher you can slide to the left in order to go to a Google now page and there's a Google button on top that is always on the ready if you want to do a search but of course you still have the usage of the hot word okay Google in order to turn on the phone and essentially turn on Google assistant you can also hold the home button and it will open up Google assistance the thing about Google assistant is that it's actually kind of scary accurate it's really good at picking up the voice and in the very loud area that I was in the phone was able to pick up my voice and accurately convert my speech to text with no problems at all and the search is actually really robust you're seeing in this clip right now that I'm saying a lot of different search terms and Google is able to take the text that it converts from my speech and do the search properly in a lot of cases actually opening the appropriate application that I wanted for example saying that I wanted to play a specific very specific thing like TJ Perkins entrance meant that it opened up tube and showed me lo and behold the actual video of that entrance this version of Android nougat is only found on the pixel and it is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 one that is the latest Snapdragon that is available and the most powerful currently and it's backed by four gigabytes of RAM and for the pixel you have the 27 70 milliamp hour battery while the pixel XL has a much larger 3450 milliamp hour battery that can be quick charged or rather fast charged for up to seven hours of battery life in only 15 minutes also if you are a little bit worried when the slide came up showing the USBC port on the bottom rest assured there is a headphone jack on here it was a bit of a sidestep that they did everyone gasped in the audience when they saw that portion but the headphone jack is on the top of the phone obviously we're going to put Google assistant through its paces once we get our review units and the same will be said for the Android iteration that's found in these phones it seems pretty snappy so far and it's actually quite clean and if these pixel phones are supposed to go up against the standalone ecosystem of iOS for example well then this is going to be one way of consolidating what is supposed to be what Android is all about with that all said the phone's themselves are kind of bare-bones which I actually personally liked I prefer to have bare bone looking phones that then have a lot of capabilities underneath that surface that glass panel on the bag that combines with the metal unibody is a kind of unique look but overall it's basically just a shiny slab that is available where the fingerprint reader is and then of course there's the camera up top because of that chamfer on the sides I got to the point where I thought this phone looked like an iPhone mash together with a moto Z force and finally we will talk about the camera a little bit of course we don't have any samples to show you but we did play around with a few of the settings on there the camera application looks a lot like what you would expect from a Nexus phone it's pretty simple and you can swipe in and out in order to go to different modes now there is video stabilization on here but there's no oh is on these cameras it's all EIS which is software based stabilization and so that might sway a few people but apparently video stabilization supposed to be very good we will do with that testing to get our review units on paper it might seem like these cameras are exactly the same as the ones we got in the Nexus line from last year twelve point three megapixels at one point five five micron sizes which make for better low-light shots and F 2.0 aperture but there should be some optimizations in here and Google was very keen on telling us that the XO mark gave this camera one of its highest if not the highest rating of a smartphone ever it does help though that Google photos is a big part of the pixel phones where you will be able to use unlimited storage at full resolution for both videos and photos so when it comes to the lack of an SD card slot you probably won't have any problems keeping space on your phone because everything will be uploaded to the cloud anyway with a price tag on the pixel of 649 dollars we will have to think a little harder on whether or not these phones are actually that exciting enough to warrant such a high price point with an even higher price point therefore 128 gigabyte models or even just a pixel excel at 32 gigabytes but with that said there's a lot to be excited about not just with the pixel phones but with the rest of the ecosystem that Google is hoping to create based upon what is actually a pretty mind-blowing thing in Google assistant but of course we will give you our final thoughts on this once we get our hands on review units and our full review comes out here at Android authority so keep it tuned to Android or 'ti for more about the Google pixel phones and you can also see a couple of quick look comparisons with a couple of the bigger phones including the note 7 and the Nexus 6p both of which will be compared to the Google pixel XL from there you can stick around for our full reviews and even more from the Google pixel phones because we are your source for all things Android