Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel 8 Pro + Pixel Watch 2: The Whole Package?”.
It took me 7 weeks and two trips to Tropical microchip conferences, to figure out what to say about the new Google phone and even then I had to rope in its sibling, Smartwatch and earbud buddies to summon anything of substance. Why? Well, as Daniel Bader said on the Android police podcast about those microchips talking about these things is the equivalent of talking about drying paint. It is not fun. It’S not because they’re, not not impressive. In fact, he was making the opposite point that mobile silicon has gotten.
So good across the board that comparing it is ultimately feudal if you’re talking to a mainstream audience and folks with smartphone reviews we’re getting to the same exact point. This phone lasts all day. Its display is bright. Its speakers are loud. It feels good, as they say in the hand, it’s nearly everything. A high-end smartphone should be offered at a competitive price, to quote the dismemberment plan, and you know that’s good news for the pixel 8. Pro 2 years after the risky reinvention of the pixel line, Google has Blended, boring iteration with buzzworthy Innovation to produce a phone. That’S easy to recommend, but when you zoom out to include the watch and buds that share its name well, the pixels get a little bit.
Fuzzier, on the same day, the pixel 8 Pro was announced Fast Company published a story in which Marcus Collins coined a term for the tethers that keep people connected to a brand calent bonds. Every time I open up my MacBook to find that the Apple watch on my wrist has already unlocked it. For me, that’s a bond every time I open up my Galaxy buds next to a new Samsung phone and they’re already paired that’s another and with Each Bond the cement con connecting me to that ecosystem gets stronger in the pixel family. Those bonds start with the Aesthetics. The Serene Bay color of my 8 Pro review device is reflected in the accents on my pixelbuds Pro sample, while the pixel watch 2’s coral color Pops in its own complimentary way. Those playful colors combine with the contoured curves of the casings to produce an ergonomic array of mobile tech, that’s slightly Whimsical and, above all, cohesive.
The these were made to work together, and this year Google has put more thought into how they work together, starting with your previous phone moving into the pixel 8 Pro was easy thanks to fast pair support and a transfer process. That brings over many more of your custom settings and preferences than before. Setting up the watch and buds is similarly simple. The buds are essentially unchanged from the version I reviewed on the 20122 episode of the leftovers, but the added time has given me more insights on the plus side.
The battery life is tremendous. I used the buds for the entirety of the 4 and 1/ half hour flight to the mediatech summit and they still had 51 % left. When I landed, that’s not counting the full charge left in the case. Trouble is putting the buds into that case. Doesn’T always disconnect them from the phone? The buds will sometimes continue playing audio, even while charging an issue reported many times by many users over the years. Also for someone with multiple phones, it’s vital to be able to switch which device you want the buds to connect to now, I’m always invited to switch the source when I pick up a different phone, but the transfer seldom works on the first try. Buggy buds are bummer buds now the pixel Watch 2 is a new device, not that you’d know it because of the almost totally identical industrial design, which is still much too small for my wrist with much too large a bezel but from its Health sensors to it. Its charging disc to the Snapdragon processor, it’s a new product.
The most significant change is that the battery life is no longer abysmal. If you’re careful, you can push it to 2 days. Not me, though, my review sample is the cellular Edition and I keep the always on display enabl, like the good Lord intended, so I personally never get more than a day and a half. But to me the LTE is worth it. I love being able to leave the apartment without my phone for a quick coffee run and still get notifications on my watch as long as my phone is still connected to the network back in my apartment, and when I do remember my phone, I love being able To set it up for a photo op and remotely trigger the camera from the watch on my wrist using a pre-installed app, I don’t have to go, hunt for and don’t need to set up uh.
That is when it actually works as intended. Yeah here’s the thing the pixel Watch 2 is also a bit buggy. It’S slow, slow to to register a wrist, raise and wake up and display a notification slow to silence an alarm and intolerably slow to brighten after it’s spent some time in the darkness. Beneath your jacket, cuff, these little delays all conspire to make the thing feel I’ve used. This word a lot in Google reviews inconsistent and that’s what led to my epic selfie fail.
If you use the pixel watch as a remote camera shutter, you hit the button and about 2 seconds later the watch buzzes and makes to capture sound simple right, yeah. Well, here’s the thing that notification on the watch is delayed. In reality, the phone is snapping the photo the instant you hit the button on the watch, which is why the only full group photo from the mediatech summit has this stupid guy poking his wrist with his nose in the foreground. Fortunately, it’s easy enough to paint out the goober thanks to the Magic Eraser built into the phone that took the photo. The pixel 8 Pro is being marketed mostly on the back of the buzzword of the Year AI.
If you’ve watched even a minute of network TV in the States this season, you know the pixel can fix the smiles and faces of everyone in the group shot or relocate an off-center subject in your photo or make someone appear to be an Olympic pole vter. As with most things, AI, a large percentage of these features feel like they were built for the explicit purpose of making a commercial about them. I cannot think of a bigger waste of time than virtually manipulating a picture after the fact, rather than just telling my friends to move two steps closer together.
I also have no interest in making myself appear to levitate or virtually replacing a sky to create a memory that never existed now. Thankfully, there’s also very useful stuff. Here: we’ve talked a lot about Magic Eraser, which I use pretty often these days and audio Magic. Eraser extends that capability by letting you delete the the background noise from a video.
So you can more clearly hear the person speak. Also. I love that I can take a quick snap of a 57-year-old photograph and unblur it to coax out more details, and even if you only ever use the camera in Dumb mode, the improvements to the Optics and processing are substantial from an Open Studios.
Art exhibition in my South Brooklyn Hometown to the Snapdragon and mediatech Summits in Hawaii and California, the pixel 8 Pro did one thing I expected and one thing I didn’t respectively. It captured Stills with the crisp reliability. The pixel has come to be known for, and it delivered high quality video to go with those photos. Even though video boost and night sight, video are two upgrades that won’t come to the pixel until after this review goes live, the 8 Pro doesn’t need them to outshine every other Google phone to date, I’m not not going to get in the weeds here with talk About focal lengths or resolutions, the only specific I’ll touch on is that the optical zoom is still just as impressive as the jarring switch between cameras is frustrating the rest. I will leave to you to judge.
While I sit here and silently stew about the fact that my pixel fold, which cost twice as much often produces output, that’s half as good stop making foldables second class citizens anyway enjoy. I don’t mean to Fan the Flames of the argument that phone reviews are basically camera reviews these days, but to invoke the D plan, [ Applause ] again, you know it does calls well. It gets a little warmer than some phones, but nothing crazy. It charges wirelessly like a civilized smartphone, should the camera bar still gets scratched up, it doesn’t wobble on a tabletop and etc, etc.
Mid edit Mr mobile here I just realized, as I was cutting this video that I forgot to mention the temperature sensor. I’M I’m not actually going to talk about the temperature sensor. I just wanted you to know that I remembered it and I’m actively deciding to give it exactly the amount of time it deserves. The thing is the pixel story is interesting.
It’S just that you have to dig deeper for it in the weeks since its releasee, it’s become apparent that the pixel probably isn’t the phone you should buy if you’re a hardcore gamer, and that’s because of a decision Google made years ago to design its own silicon, Which, hopefully, will someday produce the kind of truly smartphone the company has promised for ages, but in the interim, we’re forced to deal with lower horsepower than comparable smartphone chips as well as infrequent, but still irksome bugs you really don’t see on other phones in this class. Do I realize that between this point and the one about the watch 2’s processor, that I’ve single-handedly undermined the point I made in the intro that comparing chips doesn’t matter? Yes? Yes, I do the question you need to ask: if you’re considering a pixel is whether the features, the phone offers and Google’s vision for the future of phones is worth those compromises. I think for the vast majority of American buyers. It absolutely will be the features it offers are thoughtful and convenient witness call screening the single greatest anti-spam countermeasure I’ve ever used and recorder the single greatest tool for interviews, classwork and podcasts to say nothing of the more fun stuff like now playing delivered with a unique And playful aesthetic, Emoji wallpapers yay, supported by a promise of 7 years of software updates. You know the the pixel is great for these things. The ecosystem question is less clear-cut. Yes, all this stuff looks good together and it gets along in a basic sense, but the bugs with the buds are annoying and the watch needs more size options and a stronger feature set. If it’s going to revive the were OSS platform that Google effectively killed through 5 years of neglect, oh and don’t even get me started on the pixel tablet.
It feels like it’s gotten better recently, but that’s going to depend on Google Assistant becoming better and that’s going to depend on AI, which is going to depend on new hardware, so jury’s still out on the pixel tablet. If Android is ever going to get back to being a compelling option to normal folks Cross Shopping against Apple, those people need a vertically oriented One-Stop shop for all their gadgets. I think the pixel ecosystem has as much a chance of becoming that destination as Samsung’s, but it needs to offer more and it needs to work better. Of course, that’s for normal folks for geeks.
Like me, the beauty of Android has always been that I can pick from many manufacturers to Sate my sick desires, a flip phone from Motorola, a folding phone from OnePlus, a smartwatch from Garmin and earbuds from nothing personally. This is The Witches Brew of technology that keeps this mobile man happy at the tail end of 23, and I’m thankful that Android’s open Nature still allows for such a variegated grab bag, no matter which device you daily Drive. Do it distinctly with dbrand dip on down to the description, to see cases and skins from my sponsor from seab breze to Solstice abusement Park to obsidian, or do what I do and stick some real leather on there? So your phone ages, like you, do alarmingly quickly showing every scar but smelling better all the time the link to debrand your device is down below. This review was produced after just under 2 months with pixel 8 Pro pixel Watch 2 and pixelbuds pro review samples.
All of which are on loan from Google, as always the manufacturer, provided no compensation for this content, nor was it given any editorial input, wrs or copy approval. That means these opinions are mine and mine alone. Please subscribe to the mrmobile on YouTube.
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