Gadgetory

Luke loves his pixel Excel but the issue with the original pixel for me was that while I did end up using it for a couple of months it was a bit of a one-trick pony an expensive one at that and a good camera or even a great camera is not enough for me I need a phone that knows what I want a phone that shares my interests a phone that I can't wait to greet at the end of the day with a great big hug or failing that a little squeeze I also need sponsors like Intel who keep this show going CyberPower pcs lineup of gaming desktops feature Intel seventh generation core i7 processors check them out at the link below in some ways Google launched two different sizes of the same phone both the pixel two and the pixel two XL feature basically the same internal specs with the main difference being the amped up battery on the larger model to power the larger screen and I was both surprised and pleased to find out during the October 4th event that both phones even get the same optical and electronic image stabilization and portrait mode camera features a move that is much appreciated by those of us with both small hands and precious moments to capture but pretty much any flagship Android phone these days has the same internal specs including the Galaxy s8 that launched six months ago so we have to look a little closer to see that while they are clearly related they're also as different as I am from my siblings they both still sport a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor satisfyingly clicky lock buttons a 12 point two megapixel single rear camera and the partial glass backed design that debuted on the original pixel but is somehow much more refined looking this time around but then when we flip them over they're like nothing alike it's almost like they were made by completely different contract manufacturers with different capabilities so the pixel 2 is lightweight with squared off edges making it easy to handle but a little chunky looking with larger top and bottom bezels to make room for stereo speakers and I guess the rest of the basically no compromises internals the XL by contrast is the far more 20-17 looking of the two devices little changes like the seamless transition from the body to the sexier curved glass and wider gamut not to mention much higher resolution display wouldn't really bother me as a pixel to buyer but the taller aspect ratio of the display makes handling of the devices very different in day-to-day use the pixel puts less strain on your thumbs to reach the spacebar while you're typing while the Excel uses its extra screen height to compensate for the space lost to the on-screen buttons by comparison it also fits a lot more content on the screen at a time though it should be noted that both of them lose out to the galaxy s 8 and the node 8 in this regard and this affects media playback in a big way too if you're a movie watcher by the xl2 period surprisingly they both managed to pack similar and impressive sounding stereo front-facing speakers like seriously HTC boomsound lovers y'all got something to upgrade to finally but while six inch versus five inch doesn't sound like that big of a deal the pixel wastes far more of its screen real estate in ultra wide content so think about how much bigger a 50-inch TV looks compared to a 40 inch TV that is the difference on to day-to-day usability once I added a specifically compatible well thankfully inexpensive type C to three-and-a-half millimeter adapter to my headphone pouch the pixel 2 and the 2 XLR that they're just a pleasure to use gone is the stress about incidental water splashes from last gen and I gotta say while I had no pressing desire for a squeezable phone how tall is Linus Sebastian I really like it as a super natural way to bring up the Google assistant to the point where I even found myself just using the Google assistant a lot more than I have in the past now you'll hit it by accident a fair bit at first just trying to pick your phone up off the table or put it into your pocket but the sensitivity has a wide adjustment range so if you're not the kind of person who's voice saying OK Google would take about minutes to capture and steal ok Google ok Google ok Google and you're comfortable with the reduced security of a voice recognition unlock man there are a lot of fast ways to get things done ok Google assuming of course that what you want to get done isn't that complicated the thing for me is that the more that these digital assistants can do the more obvious it becomes what they cannot do so I can open Google Docs handy but I can't then open a specific document or start dictating without touching my phone I can search for Drive badminton center and I can navigate there but then I can't add a stop at a name W on my way without touching my phone while I'm in the car and it's stuff like this that makes the whole exercise feel a little pointless I mean no not not pointless that's not fair but but definitely incomplete I mean I can see how folks who just want to perform discrete singular tasks like turn off the light or play that song that I like would be really happy with the current state of things but for some reason a lot of what I end up wanting to do is going to result in me entering it manually at some point anyway and if that's the case it's usually faster to just do it myself correctly the first time rather than relying on what is much better but still imperfect voice recognition a perfect example is that it recorded this as in perfect instead of imperfect and the screen turned off while I was finishing the recording because I've been talking for a minute sigh and of course I meant hi not that sigh the good news is that even if you don't give a crap about Google assistant Android Oreo has plenty to love in no particular order here are a few things that made my life better versus the iPhone 8 and the galaxy s 8 upcoming events at the top of the homescreen super nice to have holding task switcher to run multiple apps on screen to work with Netflix boo but wit supported apps it's faster smoother and more intuitive for multitaskers than ever before being able to snooze notifications is a godsend for busy people like me so finally there is a middle ground between dismissing them and forgetting about them and having them just pile up and better management of background app power usage makes the pixel to behave very nicely for a phone with only a twenty seven hundred million power battery I have gripes still though Google allows bootloader unlocking but I shouldn't need to load a custom ROM to do something as simple as swapping the on screen nav buttons and this suggestion that I found on reddit was even more annoying than reaching all the way over for back and while we're at it I capture markup and send out a lot of screenshots and stock Android screenshot management sucks compared to iOS 11 and third-party variants of Android bringing us to the camera even though it lacks a few shooting modes compared to its competitors like 60 FPS 4k or ultra high frame rate slo-mo it's great but don't take my word for it here's our resident camera guru Brandon to tell you guys how the front-facing camera is okay if you turn off the tear facial processing and the back shooter is great and you're gonna love it the front-facing camera is okay if you turn off the to face retouching and the rear camera is great that's it I mean could you do a follow-up video next week maybe comparing the pixel two to the iPhone 8 and the no DEET or something okay well great then so bottom line should you buy it's actually kind of hard to evaluate especially the pixel to excel in the absence of its true competitor the iPhone 10 but squeezed changed the game a lot more for me than I thought even if almost everything else about it especially the absence of wireless charging it still feels like the Nexus 2 pixel price hike was a bit of a kick in the balls so I like the design much better than the super boring iPhone 8 but iOS 11 and Tweedy touch are great so is face ID better than squeeze and Google assistant how about the camera on the 10 these are all questions that need answers unless of course you're a die-hard Android user and you were never going to consider the dark side anyway so for you guys the pixel to excel gets a strong recommendation with the two just behind it due to its fat bezel and last gen 16 by 9 screen so yeah you probably already knew this but these are the Android phones to have right now assuming of course that you're a great big baller speaking of being a great big baller why not look like a baller with a D brand skin on your phone debrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins and they've got them for laptops phones tablets consoles controllers and more they use high-quality authentic true textured 3m vinyl on every product and their skins are cut with unrivaled precision so use their configurator see what your products gonna look like you could go with the panda or the reverse panda for your pixel - even if you can't get one and not only that but you get a little bit of protection against incidental scuffs and scratches they ship worldwide they've got great customer service and you can I'm out at the link below so thanks for watching guys if you dislike this video you can hit that button but if you liked it hit like get subscribes maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the links in the video description also down there we've got our merch store which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum which you should totally join