Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel 2021”.
This video is sponsored by curology. We call it pixel we’re proud to introduce the google pixel 2 google pixel 3 pixel 4. whenever a new phone comes out rightfully so it gets all the attention. It’S got a shiny new feature, that’s probably been rumored for five or six months, so we finally get a chance to see it, but usually it’s at the expense of what came before it, and i think that’s especially true with google’s pixel line. Pixel 5 still relatively new, there’s rumors of the pixel six we’ve kind of forgotten the pixels that came before it, but google’s phone line, i think, is so unique in the entire space of smartphones, especially when it comes to android like they’ve, always been held up by Amazing camera, google, software and google’s willingness to keep updating them regularly. That’S what’s made the pixels great. So i get this question all the time from friends and family and it’s which phone should i buy and i tend to just default to whatever the newest thing is: if you’re an iphone user pick up an iphone 12., if you’re an android user pick up the Latest samsung or pixel phone, but that mentality – i don’t think, is necessarily right and i kind of wanted to revisit older gen phones, especially the pixel, who continued to get software updates sort of see how good they were, and the results were incredibly surprising.
[ Applause ]. All right so like what are we working with uh? We have five generations of flagship pixels for this video, i’m not considering the a model, maybe that’ll, be a totally separate video, but dating back to 2016, and with the exception of like the current gen phone, the pixel 5 has always been a regular version and an Xl version, the biggest difference, has generally been battery size and screen, but for the most part, they’ve been identical phones that have released pretty much on schedule for five years. So as as sad as it might be. I am not going to count, though the very first pixel the launch pixel, because that one does not support android 11, but from two to five, which are really gon na, be the ones you’re gon na focus on those all support. The most current version release version at least of android, and by focusing on what’s similar, i don’t want to discount the differences between these phones, because a lot has changed from generations. Two to five: we had bezels get slimmer, bezels get bigger, we had notches come and notches go, we had facial recognition, come and go screens have obviously improved drastically over the years.
So i’m not discounting those real world differences and those are things that matter to a lot of people, but the similarities in all the phones are things that i wanted to focus on at least for this video alright. So i want to focus a lot on cameras. Like when the pixel first came out like that was the flagship feature and that’s still true to this day, but the first time we’ve seen really phones, take a huge leap forward in cameras, but since that first one really just knocked it out of the park. There’S been small improvements from the first pixel to the five still 12 megapixel sensors on board, still night sight still portrait and of course they all still have google’s amazing processing, a lot of which is happening actually on device.
So to prove my point uh, you know it’s coming. It is blind test time with photos from the pixel 2 pixel, 3 pixel, 4 and pixel 5.. So while we were thinking about the pixel and its history and what the line has accomplished, it wasn’t the only line of phones that we were discussing doing this type of video for actually, obviously apple was one of the ones we thought to do first and if You want to know more about the apple side. A whole separate channel actually called the apple circle hosted by robert rosenfeld, where it goes into a lot of detail about what apple’s doing now, what they’re doing next and sort of builds up to what’s coming from them.
If you want to check them out, i think you should we’ll put the links. You know where you expect them so. First look at these shots. Can you tell any difference in the overall quality? Can you tell difference when it comes to how it’s handling skies, how it’s handling clouds, how it looks with plants facial tones, whether it’s doing smoothing, look at the highlights? Look at some of the low lights? Do you see the difference, and maybe you see cell differences? Maybe you don’t, but if you’re looking at these photos – and they all look similar to you – i think that’s the main point of this video from two to five.
All photos have looked absolutely amazing, so if you have guesses on which was which put it in the comments, but here’s the answer for which phone took, which pictures so to my eye, the pixel 2 photos tend to look a little bit warmer and i actually prefer That look to what we got with the pixel 3, 4 and 5, and that makes sense if you actually look at the hardware in those phones. It’S the exact same sensor. It’S a sony.
Imx 363 sensor, that’s in the pixel, 3 pixel 4 and pixel 5.. So pair that with google’s processing and of course it would make sense that these photos are going to look really similar for the past three years. Now, obviously, hardware has changed.
I don’t want to discount that uh google added telephoto on the four added ultra wide angle on the five. Those are differences that matter to a lot of people, but look at the actual quality of the pictures themselves. And you see the differences. Aren’T that big and while the photos, i think all look amazing and some version of really good. The video side is the guess, the opposite side of the coin, uh they all shoot 4k and to my eye.
None of them really look that great. They tend to at least to my eye, look really over compressed but again same sensor, similar results. If you take away anything from this, it just goes to show how far ahead google was when that pixel 2 came out. How advanced the sensor was, and other manufacturers had access to the same hardware, but google’s software they’ve continued to update year over year has made the photos from that widely available. Hardware always look amazing, and it is staggering to see a phone that came out now.
Three years ago, take photos that can rival flagship phones from right now: phones that cost 12 13. 14 100. It’S a testament to really how amazing and how far ahead google’s been on the photo side. So when it comes to like personal facial care, i’ve been spending most of my time, grooming, this sweet beard uh the better part of two years, not giving that much attention to like.
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It’S a subscription service. You can tailor how often things are going to come to you and if you want to check out curology for yourself link to them down below. So aside from camera, like software and performance, are things that obviously really matter with the phone, especially if you’re talking about using a phone that came out a few years ago, so the range of processors, just to remind you from the pixel 2, was the 835. The 3 has the 845.
The four has the 855, then for the pixel 5, they went a bit downstream. At least they went away from the flagship processors and it’s got the snapdragon 765g, the spec side. Out of the way, i think again like cameras.
What matters is how it performs: how is it performing with opening apps uh in even more extreme cases? How does it perform with some of the current flagship mobile games on android, and so i went with pubg and asphalt 9. The two most like intensive games currently available for android uh, but also i wanted to kind of do an old school test like what opened faster. What gave me the best graphics, those sort of objective things that you can quantify uh and the results were actually very surprising.
So as you’d expect, the the pixel 2 was the slowest and then the pixel 3. But where things got interesting, the pixel 4 actually beat out the pixel 5, and maybe it’s because of the flagship processor. But it was interesting to see the phone that came out now over a year ago. Beat the one that’s just a few months old.
Also interesting, at least for pub g pixel 5 didn’t even have the option for mac settings. It wasn’t even like it was grayed out it just wasn’t there at all just going to show the difference, at least in the head room, with the 765g versus sort of the flagship, qualcomm processors of the past few years. So what i found surprisingly interesting with all that stuff out of the way was actually using the pixel 2 again and in all fairness, i hadn’t picked this phone up in years. It still felt plenty fast. I mean opening apps were pretty quick.
I didn’t notice any sort of lag. There was no sort of scrolling stutter, there was no sort of slowness and multitasking. It was still a very fast phone.
If i sort of had blinders on – and i just saw a screen, i would think this was a modern phone that just didn’t have a higher refresh rate screen. I think that’s actually a big point to make as well is that our perception and mine, too, was sort of the shattered this. The perception of what an older phone is in your head versus what actually is in reality are sometimes very different. I think i’ve been conditioned, especially to think like newer, better newer, faster, but that’s not always the case and that’s a big reason why a lot of people tend to gravitate towards the last gen flagship phones, because they’re still amazingly capable but they’re also usually discounted.
So, looking back to the pixel 2, it kind of reset, i guess my expectations a little bit for phones. I think this is a big reason why maybe we should start caring more about software updates than we should hardware updates now hardware. Obviously matters! You have different sensors on cameras that can give you wide angle or telephoto. Those things do matter, but this software updates the things that the phone is more capable of month over month and year over year, make a giant difference, and you don’t always see it.
If you look at from one api update to the next, if you look at what a phone could do from launch to three years later, differences are absolutely staggering and i think google doesn’t get enough credit for continuing to support their older devices and also not like Neutering them not sort of limiting features that they get you to buy their new phone, but still making their older hardware as capable as it possibly can. So i think, if you’re looking for a phone that has a really good camera, can have decent-ish battery life and also can run the most recent software. You can go as far back as a pixel 2 and still get an amazing phone with incredible cameras that can compete with 13 to 1400 flagships nowadays. But if you want to go a generation newer, you get software updates for what i assume is going to be at least another year, and the pixel 3 looks to be an amazing sweet spot sort of the whole line of phones, at least for me.
It’S kind of reset expectations when it comes to phone recommendations for myself and friends and family, and for you, if you’re, like the go-to tech expert in your house, you don’t have to recommend phones that cost three four five in some cases six times as much as These phones go for nowadays, it was really surprising to see what google’s done over the years, i think is a big testament to how they’ve continued to support their older devices. .