Gadgetory

what's going on guys I'm John wrench from TechnoBuffalo and if you couldn't tell this is the pixel 3 XL this is our review of it so this review went through a few different versions so my initial thoughts changed after a few days and that changed after a week now after 3 weeks of using it I think I know the phone pretty well your perspective that's gonna be a bit different I also think it's a testament to the quality of the device and the importance of really using a phone or anything you're reviewing for a long period of time because it totally changed my mind for me there are two reasons somebody would really buy any pixel through 3xl included a kick-ass camera and a pure Android experience with guaranteed years of updates so I'm gonna kind of work backwards here if one of those to your top reasons to buy a phone then just go out and buy the pixel 3 or 3 XL you're gonna get exactly that but if you don't fall into that box keep watching this may or may not be the phone for you and so while this review is gonna focus mostly on the XL the 3 is pretty much the exact same phone save for screen resolution size and and no knotch but most of the points that I'm gonna mention here are gonna work for it it's not jealous little bro 2 so it's making a notch let's just do it the notch it's there it's deep it's like myriad of emoji and takes or otherwise be a pretty classy looking package and kind of hugs it up my issue with the notch though isn't it's very existence like some it's how Google used it it's not housing some sort of crazy advanced facial scanning it's just a front-facing cameras and speakers and few ambient sensors things that pretty much every phone pre 2016 had at the top if you aren't adding something new why bother adding the notch at all just take the Samsung approach with slim top and bottom bezels and also a nice side effect you'd make that gigantic chin it seemed a little bit less less Chinee and if you're buying this phone chances are you're not gonna care about that notch at all and to be totally honest I can deal with the ugly design because the software is so good I just wish I didn't have to and also a small note start I feel kind of antiquated it using the fingerprint unlock in the back with phones now going facial unlocking or in Green but to its credit despite its location didn't lock pretty fast the only other real negatives the pixel 3xl aren't what it has it's what it doesn't have 4 gigabytes of RAM for a flagship it's gonna be the current model until like around October 2019 by then 1 plus 7 or 70 is probably gonna be up to 32 gigs of ram or something just ridiculous like that so it's a phones credit the lack of RAM doesn't sell the experience down although I did notice that some apps what happens to reload again if I try to opening the apps that opened up earlier in the day the overall software experience though was gonna be crazy smooth and things come along as quickly as any other phone on the market like it sir mr. Ram though isn't today it's more of the future you're planning on keeping this phone when Android Q or R hit I'm going to bed you're gonna feel the lack of gigabytes data so that's it those are really the only negatives you're gonna find here on the pixel 3 XL this is a really good phone as it exists right now towards the end of 2018 so the pixel 2 XL took a big hit for the screen and Google righted that ship this time around the 6.3 inch qHD plus panel looks really good it's not like a Samsung level but it's good enough you're not gonna notice it but being bad colors look great and since it's OLED blacks or black games movies whatever you're doing you're gonna look good there is a slight blue hue I only noticed it when I held it directly to another phone so unless you're walking around like this with another phone you're not really gonna notice it so the screen isn't the only area where Google really stepped up since last year wireless charging is here and also improved water resistance and with wireless charging you're gonna get a glass back makes a device feel awesome in the hand and to me it feels way better than the aluminum on the two than 2 XL I kind of just really liked holding it well the glass bag does look and feel awesome I don't care how strong any company's gonna claim their glasses it's going to scratch and eventually crack if you drop it especially the black I love to panda look on last year's phone so I just slapped a deep brand skin and arse to protect the back between evitable scratches and I kind of dug the aesthetic try to put one on yours we'll just link to them down below but oh that's sweet sweet sweet camera we actually did a whole video delving onto the camera and how it compared to the iPhone 10s but here are the highlights it's good like really good and at this point after all the camera success the pixel to you'd expect this to be amongst the best in the industry and Google did not disappoint their colors and sharpness and details are all pretty close to perfect low-light was awesome as well it's really good in every situation so the default settings you're not gonna get oversaturated colors like you get on kind of most Samsung but the colors are pretty close to lifelike but the most impressive to me though is portrait mode even with the single lens the camera shines this is restart to see the advantage of Google with their crazy magic machine learning it's incredible how it handles things that other phones regards to how many sensors they have struggle with things like hair and edges in if there's a cutout in the subject it's just impressive how well it handles everything without that second sensor that most phones rely on for depth those aren't the only cameras there's two living in that notch so you've got one regular selfie camera and one wide-angle camera which is pretty killer for group selfies portrait mode predictably works which is not nearly as well as a rear one if you want a selfie in portrait mode at least doesn't have kind of an over aggressive noise reduction that gives you that weird beauty mode there were some occasional though inconsistencies with portrait mode on the front-facing camera so check this out I swear I'm not that orange in real life and it wasn't like a crazy sunset and another shot when I had to make two kids on my lap I had a really tough time finding focus other things you might care about battery life and the 3430 million power battery was really solid leaving me with about 35 percent end of the day the most screen on time that I had was 7 hours but the moral being it's a dare it'll get you through a full day no problem don't expect like two or three days just plug in at night or wirelessly charge last and probably most important to a lot of you the software Android PI out-of-the-box is amazing I wasn't the biggest fan of gestures at first then I got used to them and kind of start to appreciate the nuances it's incredibly smooth if not totally intuitive at the beginning so it's got the squeeze for Google assistant that's a feature to easily laugh off heck I've been laughing it off since HTC they booted a few years ago but the last week using the phone I started using it and I found it kind of useful but what is probably the best feature of the phone is call screening so for a while I was averaging about three spam calls per day actually pay for a service to block them while I was using the pixel 3xl I would like wheat for a spam call to come and just like it see it in action this alone is like a low key reason to buy the pixel although it should come to the pixel to family as well if you got one of those speaking of two or two XL you can probably safely hold off for another years you've got one of those phones but if you're coming from the og pixel any other Android phone or an iPhone this is a perfect entry level into Android that's almost guaranteed to give you an amazing experience and almost all I said here is true again for the pixel 3 and it's also gonna save you a hundred bucks you get almost exactly the same phone if you don't have to have the high resolution and the bigger screen they make the same experience and performance just just not too low this time around so that's the pixel 3 XL if you want a phone that's not just the best Android phone on the market but arguably one of the best phones you can buy give it a look I don't think you're gonna be disappointed so for me there are two reasons somebody would buy a pickle