Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel 2 Revisited: Android P Beta!”.
Hey what is up guys, mkbhd here and recently we did that iphone 10 revisited video six months later, and that was a lot of fun. But as a lot of you guys pointed out in the comments, the only phone to spend more time in my pocket over the last couple months than that iphone was this guy, the pixel 2 xl. And it’s true. A lot of people ask over the course of the last eight months that this phone has been out. What phone do you choose or use the most often and a lot of times? I come back to this one, so we can look back at the time since this phone has come out and see how well it’s aged. What’S happened to it since then, whether it’s been graceful or not – and this is our look at that now – a lot’s happened to the pixel. Actually, it’s gotten a number of software updates, android p beta has come out recently.
I started using that because why not – and we just had google, i o and a bunch more software and ai features, announced that are coming to pixel first, so for one, the promise of being first in line for new google and android stuff when it comes out. If you have a pixel that definitely lives on no doubt, but the hardware story of this thing is actually just as interesting in a lot of ways. So this is the white one, the panda pixel 2, as i call it, and i love the white. I’Ve carried it every day with no case no skin naked, and you can see there’s definitely a little bit of chipping a little bit of scratching and the overall texture of the whole back is a lot smoother now that it’s worn down, but i can say for Sure it’s held up well, it actually hasn’t stained in white and it is still mostly metal. After all, so i’ve dropped it from low heights. I’Ve had it hit things in my pocket, accidentally no serious damage. It’S been super solid. I i do wish this phone had wireless charging, though it’s one of those weird few flagships left that doesn’t have a glass back, but at the same time i realize that this type of durability and the mostly metal body don’t allow for wireless charging. So that’s a trade-off that you get and turns out. I’M fine with it, but a moonshot goal of mine with technology is actually even with a phone with this little bit of glass, on the back, whether it’s for looks or for cell reception or whatever, to have wireless charging just up in here and to put it On a mat somewhere and just have it work would be pretty sweet. I i don’t necessarily need the whole back of the phone to be glass for wireless charging, but that’s probably pretty far off uh the not having a headphone jack same as the iphone 10. You do get used to that after having this phone for eight months. You know i’ve gotten wireless headphones. It connects via bluetooth as soon as i get into my car and just overall, even though it isn’t the prettiest phone with the thinnest bezels on the glass everywhere.
The stormtrooper look, the colored power button, the front-facing speakers i like all of it. It’S all a trade-off in certain ways, but i’m a fan of the way this hardware has held up and then, of course, there is one of the most unique parts of this phone’s hardware, which is the pressure sensitive sides, the squeeze feature, not a lot of phones, Have done the squeeze at all since then, but it’s been alright i’d say my biggest complaint. Is it’s starting to feel kind of slow like double tapping the camera, for example the physical button that stayed pretty quick? Now i use google assistant all the time, but squeezing the size of the phone. When it’s off to activate the assistant, you wait a beat and then it’s fired up and you start talking otherwise you’ll get cut off, it’s mildly annoying, but not enough to get me to stop using it. I just wait that beat and it’s worth it because google assistant has been getting so good, i mean: did you see all the improvements google just added to the assistant just in the past week at i o there’s a lot of good stuff. They added all those predictive, behaviors and routines. They added a full screen ui. They added six new voices with also plans to add literally john legend’s voice as a voice for the assistant. I don’t know why. John legend, i mean he’s cool and everything, but what about? Like david attenborough or morgan freeman, or something i don’t know, but they also improved continuous conversations, so you don’t have to say okay, google. Over and over again, you can just keep talking to it and it’ll keep answering questions and it’ll follow up with context-related answers and even what we talked about in the last video, where it will eventually make phone calls for you, so yeah, i’m gon na i’m gon Na keep squeezing and keep using the assistant and then with the software and everything apps that are built for android will for sure work on pixel. Obviously this is the premier android experience as much features as other skins and manufacturers tend to add to android. If you just want support, if you want the least amount of bugginess, if you want the fastest updates, that’s still pixel and there’s a bunch of other smaller observations like the fingerprint reader on the back of this phone is still a plus position and speed. For me, i don’t think i would make a single change to that.
Battery life has held up great, even through the beginning of my testing, with the android p beta and the fact that it’s one of the last phones with stereo front-facing speakers is severely underrated. We’Re all moving to these bezel-less phones right and we all wonder what do you do with the front-facing camera? What do you do with those sensors, but ultimately, when you get rid of the space around these screens, speakers will absolutely suffer with that, and the days of boom sounds massive stereo speakers. Uh are pretty much over with modern smartphone design. Maybe razer phone 2 will be the last dinosaur, but for now i’m enjoying it and then the camera, the single single camera on the back of this phone, this is still the best camera in any smartphone period.
I can still say that the many months later now that it’s out it doesn’t have the highest dxo mark score of any smartphone anymore. But it is still my preferred camera and i think i’ll probably end up doing some sort of an updated blind test of the best smartphone cameras. Maybe leave a thumbs up if you’re into that, but for now this is in my pocket. A big part of it is because of the camera a lot of the photos. I’Ve shared over the past couple months on twitter and instagram have come from this camera, believe it or not. Uh.
I didn’t always do that. I often used like a sony, a7r or whatever handheld camera. I wanted to take photos to share, but this is definitely in the category of one of those cameras that just encourages you to take photos and often they’re pretty great. You end up having more to share the main reason.
A lot of phones have added that second lens over the years is portrait mode and optical zoom, but pixel 2 still has excellent portrait mode. In fact, better than most with all the software optimizations, despite not having a second camera and that’s thanks to the pixel shift, i talked about in the full review – it’s really great, and then i will say with with zooming in and out you. Obviously, you will get more crisp photos with a telephoto camera with optical zoom, but i tend to not use that as much like. Even when i have a 2x button in the camera, i’ve stopped using that a lot on iphone on galaxy note and galaxy s. I’M more of like a zoom with my feet, kind of guy, so it’s not as big of a deal for me to not have a telephoto camera but anyway, really my biggest annoyance with this whole phone, and it has been since day one. It was a point of contention in all the reviews and people talking about it when this phone came out and that’s the screen, there’s a lot of drama around it and you can see why it’s pretty bright. It’S not the brightest and it’s not the most color accurate and it had a little bit of a blue cast to it depending on when you got your panel. Basically, i’ve had to calibrate to it like when a phone has a certain notable quality to it.
Like this, you have to remember that and that’s not ideal. After all, the complaints about the color space, google added those different color modes, so natural, then boosted and saturated i’ve used it in boosted mode, which is like 10, maybe boosted saturation versus the original, because the saturated is way too dramatic. Unfortunately, and like i shoot tons of photos for twitter and instagram and stuff like that to share on this camera, and then i edit them on this screen and tweak them in google photos, and i have to remember to calibrate for the colors i’m looking at on This screen versus how it will look on everyone else’s screens. That’S really the biggest difference of what it comes down to, and you have to remember that when you get a phone with a particularly different piece of hardware like this uh, but it’s not ideal at all.
So all that being said, you know, we know we know about pixel 2. What are we thinking about? Pixel 3. We’Ve talked about it a little bit in past videos, but what would i expect out of the next pixel? First of all, the camera is the most important piece of this phone and i hope they can do it better next year. I don’t necessarily know how google would do that. I have a feeling they’re going to stick to one lens, but i just i hope they can actually build on. What’S already an incredible camera and i’d love for it to have an awesome screen for them to use a quality oled panel, maybe a samsung panel, whatever it takes and then to just catch up a bit in modern design. The last pixel the last nexus and this one haven’t really been on the forefront of smartphone design. So when i say those two things, it probably means you’ll end up having a notch, that’s just where we’re at in 2018. I get it, but those are the two biggest drawbacks. I think of this phone when it comes to regular people is the screens had some complaints and the design is not so hot step. Those two things up and pixel 3 will probably be pretty high on my list. So at the end of the day, now that we’re revisiting this phone, it’s it’s held up really well, the price hasn’t really dropped at all, which is kind of weird.
Usually it does by this point, but if you’re thinking about buying this phone, i can still say also that it’s worth it uh the only reason not to buy. It would be the fact that a bunch of phones are about to come out. Oneplus 6 is about to come out, lg g7 is about to come out, and even if you still want to be on that stock, android train and be first in line for updates and get android p and everything october is not that far away.
I mean i guess it’s after summer, but that’s about when we’re expecting the next one. So if you can hold off that long, pixel 3, maybe then this price will drop, but for now this is a really great phone. I’M happy with it.
Thanks for watching talk to you, the next one, peace .