Every Android phone has always been a little
compromised, and everybody knows it. There's been a veil of bullshit
between you and what Google intended on all of them.
Sometimes that veil looks like ugly, bad, and usually
unnecessary extra software. Sometimes it looks like a carrier failing to
send out timely software updates. Other times it means getting
something inexpensive, but fundamentally flawed in some way. Even the
Nexus phones were behind the veil, little more than reference designs
with hardware that was mostly determined by a third party before Google
made tweaks here and there.
A pessimist would call this situation "fragmentation," an
optimist would call it "diversity." Either way, it hasn't really been a
huge problem for Google yet. Google wanted people to use its services,
and the Android platform was flexible and ubiquitous enough to thrive
and take over the planet, achieving dominant marketshare.
Just because Android is everywhere doesn't mean that Google is everywhere on mobile. There has been a lot of talk about Google being more "opinionated"
about what a phone should be, and Google's opinion has always been
hidden behind that veil. That situation might be okay at the low end,
but at the high end (where all the profit and mindshare is), Samsung and
Apple have expressed the only opinions that really matter. With Note 7s off the market and Samsung hedging its bets against Google's services, that situation was going to become untenable someday.
Someday is today: Google is making a phone for the first
time. It's called the Pixel and it’s a Google phone inside and out,
sold directly by the company to a mass audience for the first time.
With Pixel, we finally get to see behind the veil and get an unmediated
experience of Google's very best shot at a phone. All the excuses that
existed before for Android phones not living up to their potential won’t
work here.
No more bullshit.
There are actually two
Pixels: the regular 5-inch screen version and a larger 5.5-inch version
called the Pixel XL. They are identical in every respect except for the
size of their batteries, the resolution of their screens, and, of
course, their prices: the spectrum ranges from $649 for a 32GB Pixel and
goes all the way up to $869 for a 128GB Pixel XL.
For people who have been following Google's phone efforts so far, the best comparison we have are the Nexus phones
spanning the past six years. That comparison has led many to experience
sticker shock about the price, because Nexus phones were usually
inexpensive. But the Pixel is different: although it is manufactured by
HTC, it's fully designed by Google. And Google designed it to compete at
the top tier, so it's priced to match the iPhone and the Galaxy S7. It
has a couple incredibly obvious objectives in mind with this phone: make
it familiar and make it powerful.
Let's start with familiar and say the obvious thing: the
Pixel kind of looks like an iPhone. Every high-end phone these days is
designed with some combination of metal and glass, and so you could
argue that there are only so many ways to make a rectangle. But even so,
look at the bezels on the front, the curves at the corners, the antenna
lines, and the placement of the speaker; the thing looks very familiar.
After years of trying, Samsung managed to find its own, techier
aesthetic. Maybe Google will do that eventually, but for this first try I
think it wants the thing to look like what what people are used to.
People are used to iPhones.
That said, there are lot of differences, and they add up
to a phone that's utilitarian and approachable. The biggest design
element is the glass shade that replaces the metal on the top third of
the back of the phone. Functionally, it might help with radio reception,
but mostly I think it's there to align the phone in your hand.
Neither Pixel is precisely flat, there's a subtle wedge
shape to them to accommodate the camera at the top. That means there’s
no camera bump but also that they still feel relatively thin where you
actually hold them — on the bottom half. On the front, it's easy to
kvetch about the large bezel on the bottom, but I don't mind it; it
makes the phone feel balanced and it's more comfortable to hit the
on-screen home button.
Google puts the fingerprint sensor on the back, and I
really like having it there. It's a hassle when the phone is sitting on a
table, but I usually pick up my phone to interact with it anyway. You
can just rest your finger on it to turn on and unlock the phone, but it
doesn't serve as a home button. You can also set it up so that when you
slide your finger down on it, it pulls down the notification shade.
The Pixel is not waterproof, which is dumb and annoying. I
should also note that a very short fall managed to crack the screen on
the smaller Pixel during our review. A sample size of one is obviously
too small to say that these devices are less durable than they ought to
be, but it's not a great sign.
It fast charges via USB-C and there's only one speaker —
at the bottom. Luckily, it's a pretty loud, decent speaker (a charitable
person might say that’s why the bezel on the bottom is so large). There
is, of course, a headphone jack on the top.
These are easily the best Android phones you can buy
As for specs: they're great. Both Pixel variants have a
Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and flat-out gorgeous
OLED screens with deep blacks and vibrant, punchy colors. And that’s
important: at some point next month, Daydream VR will finally get
released and you'll want high-quality screens for that.
The Pixels are fast — noticeably faster than Samsung's
Galaxy S7. On performance alone, these are easily the best Android
phones you can buy. For a phone made by Google, that's absolutely the
expectation — it's just good to note that at its first time at bat,
Google hit a home run.
For the first time, Google is arguing strenuously that it
can make a better phone because it controls both the hardware and
software. So I wouldn't enjoy being another Android manufacturer right
now. That's not my problem nor yours, though. For us, the really
important question is simply this: did Google take advantage of that
integration to push the Pixel beyond what has been possible on other
Android phones.
I'd say that the answer is yes. Google tells me that once
again it did more work optimizing touch response to make the phone feel
snappier. In fact, the company claims that under a high-speed camera
it's exactly as responsive as an iPhone. It doesn't quite feel that way
to me, but perhaps the differences come down to how the different
operating systems tune their inertia on scrolling.
I also think that Google was able to optimize battery
life beyond what other Android phones can do. Over the week and a half I
tested the phones, I got absolutely stupendous battery life, especially
on the Pixel XL. Last Sunday I streamed two hours of the Vikings-Texans
game, used the phone throughout the day, and obsessively scrolled
Twitter during the presidential debate. At the end of the day I was
still at 30 percent.
In my experience, the Pixels are lasting a couple of
hours longer than comparably sized iPhones or Nexuses. That’s better
than the "about a day" you get from most phones these days, and it’s so
good that I’m a little worried that it won’t last or my results are an
outlier. So I’ll note that two other reviewers I spoke with were less
pleased with the battery life on the smaller Pixel. If you care about
battery life, definitely get the XL. It feels much smaller than the
iPhone 7 Plus, too.
Besides the battery, Google
says the other hardware component that benefits the most from Google’s
assembly integration is the Pixel camera. The camera on the back is 12.3
megapixels with an f2.0 lens and two ways to focus: phase detect and
laser auto focus. It has a two-tone flash, too, but unfortunately no
optical image stabilization. Google product VP Brian Rakowski calls this
"the best smartphone camera anyone has ever made." Usually you don't
hear such bold claims, but he's confident — DxOMark gave it the highest score it's ever given a phone.
But benchmarks are one thing, results are very much
another. Luckily for Google, the results on the Pixel are very, very
good. I put it in the same ballpark as the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S7 in
most situations, which is not something I expected to say going in.
The Pixel bested the iPhone in picking up detail and
color in my test shots. To my eyes, it seems to be making more pleasing
decisions with lighting and HDR, too. I want to put the emphasis on
"more pleasing," because my hunch is that if we looked at the raw input
each sensor is getting we'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference.
Instead, the distinctions between all three of these phone cameras are
more about the stylistic decisions each company is making. Both Google
and Samsung are slightly more aggressive at processing the image into
something pleasing, while the iPhone seems to give a more natural look.
It matches or beats the iPhone 7 and the Galaxy S7 Edge
But for me, the most important thing is that Google seems
to have finally fixed my biggest gripe about most Android cameras: the
speed. The camera app opens fast and takes pictures immediately. Google
also has figured out a way to make HDR feel fast — the camera defaults
to HDR auto and though sometimes it takes a couple of seconds to process
the HDR image, it happens in the background, freeing you to take more
shots. You can manually turn on HDR+ mode, which forces the camera to
take a higher quality HDR shot and slows things down a bit.
Holding your finger down on the shutter button takes
burst photos, and the Google Photos app will pick the best one for you
and also automatically make a little GIF animation of your shots. If you
like custom camera controls, there's good news and bad news. The good
news is that you have easy access to AF/AE Lock by holding your finger
down on the screen, and dragging your finger up and down adjusts
exposure. The less good news is that the camera defaults to HDR Auto
every time you open it — even if you turned HDR off the last time you
used it.
Google did add some video stabilization software that
ties the camera sensor to the gyroscope. It can stabilize what you're
shooting as long as you don't shake the camera too much.
Walking down a wooded path: fine, the results are stable and don't have a
"jelly" effect, though the video does look vaguely artificial to me.
Running down that path: less fine, this isn't going to save you from
shaky video if you really jostle it.
Bottom line: if you wanted to agree with Google and call
this the best smartphone camera, I wouldn't argue with you. Instead I
would say that picking the best camera among the Pixel, the iPhone 7,
and the Samsung Galaxy S7 is more a matter of personal preference than
it is of pure picture quality. And I would add that I don't think Google
would have gotten this far if it hadn't controlled both the hardware
and the software from the start.
So Google has made a great
phone that can compete at the high end. But that's really not enough
reason for it to exist — at least not for a company like Google.
Instead, the real reason the Pixel exists is to be the flagship platform for the Google Assistant.
You launch the Assistant by long-pressing the home button
and then talking, just like Siri on the iPhone. You can also say "OK
Google," but (as always) that's a little less reliable for me. What's
remarkably reliable is the Assistant's ability to understand what I'm
asking: it gets it right almost every time, in all sorts of noise
environments, and even when my data connection isn't very good.
The Assistant shows up in a chat-like interface that
slides up from the bottom. You pose your question, Google answers it,
and then you can ask follow-up questions either by speaking or tapping a
suggested reply.
There's a lot riding on the Assistant being good. When he announced the Pixel, CEO Sundar Pichai envisioned creating a personal Google for each person.
In order to make that happen, the company is going to need to keep
collecting and analyzing a lot of data to make that happen. So the
tradeoff has to be that you get a massive benefit from using the Assistant.
I can't judge for you whether it's a good idea to
continue to let Google know so much about you — including location, web
and search history, and whatever is on your screen when you launch the
Assistant — but I can tell you if the Assistant is any good. Short
answer: it is. But it still lives in a weird world of functionality.
Sometimes it amazes you with what it can figure out and sometimes it
also baffles you when it can’t answer seemingly obvious questions.
When you ask the Assistant for information that can be
culled from the web, it's impressively, sometimes ridiculously, smart.
It can read the screen and then tell you who the cast is for the TV show
you're reading about — then understand follow-up questions about
someone like Lee Pace (who is a national treasure). The Assistant can read back relevant sections of how-to articles, complete with spoken sourcing.
In general it's less likely to frustrate you enough to stop using it like Siri, but it's not radically better. For example, it can tell me when the next debates are but it's not smart enough to understand its own answer has enough information to add it to my calendar.
It also doesn't (yet) talk to as many apps and services
as Siri does. I've successfully made dinner reservations with OpenTable
but it can't call an Uber. Google says it's been working to create an
"Actions" system that makes those integrations easier for the user than
it is on, say, Amazon's Alexa. That system won't arrive until December, unfortunately.
Meanwhile the Assistant is also able to do most of the
basic phone stuff you'd expect: make calls, send texts, adjust screen
brightness, and so on. It also has a daily briefing feature that will
tell you the weather, your next appointment, and play some news from
sources like NPR, the BBC, and Fox.
The Google Assistant is the smartest there is, but it's not a genius
That daily briefing is similar to the Flash Briefing, a
feature I use with Amazon’s Alexa every day, and I love it. It's also
the perfect example of the Assistant's as-yet unrealized promise: for as
much as Google knows about me, it's not using all that information
effectively yet. See, my most important Google calendar is on my work
Google account, and the Assistant doesn't include that in the briefing.
If I explicitly ask about my next appointment, it can find it, but it
doesn't include it in my daily briefing.
There is one place where Google knows a lot about me and
its Assistant returns amazing results: Google Photos. I’ve asked it for
whiteboards, pictures of my cat, pictures of my kitchen, pictures of my
friends who I don’t ever remember tagging, selfies, locations, and more.
Every time Google finds the pictures. It’s way more accurate and
comprehensive than iOS and Siri.
Even though there's ostensibly One Google Brain behind
all of it, the different lobes don't always seem to be talking to each
other. That confusion extends to the various ways that Google exists on
the Pixel itself. You can only speak to the Assistant, for example, not
type at it. Except that you can type at it in Allo, Google's
chat app. You can also tap the Google search button on the home screen
to type queries, but that's not technically the Assistant. Oh, and
Google Now, the predictive information stream, still sits to the left of
your main home screen.
That's four different ways to talk to Google on this
phone, not counting apps like Maps and Gmail. And each one has a
slightly different interface and provides slightly different results.
For example, the Assistant can’t recognize songs yet, but asking the
exact same question with the Google search button works fine.
To be very clear: the Google Assistant is absolutely the
smartest of the assistant bunch, but it's not yet in a class of its own.
Google knows so much more about me than, say, Apple, and its assistant
should reflect that. Because Google itself is placing so much emphasis
on the Assistant, it should be held to a higher standard than all the
rest — and there's clearly still some work to do.
Since we're getting into
the business of holding the Pixel to a higher standard, let's also do
that with Android. In general, the persistent knock on Android is that
its third-party apps are slightly worse than on iOS and that it can
often feel slower or "jankier." I think that these arguments still have
some merit, but not as much as the conventional wisdom would have you
believe. I find Android Nougat to be comprehensible and powerful, but it still has some annoying spots.
The phones ship with version 7.1 of Android Nougat, with a
few Pixel-specific features. The one you'll notice right away is a
custom launcher with round icons and a new swipe-up gesture to get to
the app drawer. I like it — but then I am the guy who was already using a
third-party launcher with a custom icon theme
to begin with. You can also long-press on icons to get shortcut
options, and the neat trick with them is you can drag any of those
shortcuts out and make it a top-level icon in your launcher. There are
also some nice Live Wallpapers that change based on your location, time
of day, or even your battery level.
Google is also providing some bonus features for Pixel
users. There's chat and phone support built right into the Settings app
on the phone. If you like, you can give screen-viewing capabilities to
your support representative so they can walk you through your issue. You
also get free, unlimited cloud storage for every picture and video you
take with the Pixel.
As for Android 7.1, it's a nice incremental update. It
has support for Daydream VR, which I didn't get to test. It also
(finally!) has a Night Mode that shows less blue light so it's easier on
your eyes in the dark. It is aggressively, almost ridiculously yellow
and I am not as fond of it here as I am on iOS devices, where it’s
possible to adjust the strength of the filter.
Google has done more tuning to make Android feel more
responsive to touch — and that work is much appreciated. But I don't
think that same attention to detail has been applied to the overall
interface yet. Take the new keyboard as one example: it supports GIF
search, but it's buried deep in the keyboard and it only shows up in
certain supported messaging apps. Sometimes it's there, usually it's
not, and it's basically guaranteed you'll forget about it and never use
it.
I should note that the Pixel will get software updates
before any other Android phone — and they'll install quietly in the
background on a custom partition and seamlessly switch you over when
they're ready. Verizon users will have a small handful of apps
downloaded to their phone when they put a SIM in, but you can easily
delete them without any issue.
These are small gripes about an operating system that I
genuinely like and prefer over iOS for its openness and flexibility. But
in making a system that supports such flexibility, Google has
historically let its opinions about design and functionality take a back
seat to the preferences of Android manufacturers (and carriers). And
that has meant that you need to do a little more work to make Android
feel polished than you should have to. Google has, in essence, been too
deferential to everybody else in the Android ecosystem.
You can see the results of that deference most clearly in its messaging apps, where the company's "try everything and don't piss off anybody"
strategy has it losing out to Apple, Facebook, and even smaller outfits
like Telegram. Should you be using SMS messaging, Hangouts, Allo, the
messenger app Verizon auto-installs, Facebook Messenger, or all of the
above? Google doesn't offer any guidance on the issue, and that's a
problem. The result is confusion for potential iPhone switchers who
don't know what their go-to messaging app should be.
I think it's just going to take a while for Google's
"opinionated" take on how its software should be designed to get
stronger. I hope it does get stronger. Every time Google has made a
forceful choice in designing the hardware or the software on this phone,
it's been a good one.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-phone-review-pixel-xl
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/10/18/13304090/google-pixel-phone-review-pixel-xl
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