What's happening everyone?
My name is Alex and welcome back.
In today's video we are gonna be talking about the Pixel 3 XL and my experience with this
phone after using it for for about 3 months as my daily driver or my day to day phone.
so I got this phone a couple of weeks before it was released and I am not using it because
I don't have other options, I could use my Note 9, I could use my Mate 20 Pro but there
is something that brings me back to this phone every single time.
now don't get me wrong this phone is far from being perfect but as I said there is something
about it that always brings me back, but we are gonna talk about every single thing.
so we are gonna start with the physical appearance, as you are well aware the back of the phone
is made out of glass but me personally i've been using this phone with a case 95% of the
time, I only take without a case if I use some tighter pants or if I am going somewhere
fancy and I just don't want the bulkiness of the case to get i the way.
So if I remove the case I have absolutely no scratches on the back but that makes sense.
Since I have a case on it there are no scratches on the camera either because otherwise the
camera would touch any surface everytime you would place this down so there are no scratches,
and the fingerprint scanner works better than it first did because now it got a bit faster
after a couple of updates.
Now, keep in mind that the fingerprint scanner is not as fast as other phones available on
the market but it's still very very usable.
Now there is something strange about this phone and that's the fact that the phone doesn't
support face unlocking and as you are well aware pretty much any phone available on the
market, even like $100 phones support face unlocking, well but not this one and that
may have to do with security because face unlocking isn't as secure as a PIN or the
fingerprint scanner.
Moving to the front of the device, well, here I don't use a screen protector and I haven't
used a screen protector for pretty much any phone and without using a screen protector
I don't have absolutely any scratches on the screen but keep in mind that I try to protect
the screen as much as I can, so I am not gonna have the keys in the same pocket as the phone,
I'm not gonna have another phone in the same pocket, so I do my best to keep the screen
scratch free basically, and after three months well the phone basically looks like new and
there are no scratches anywhere but that has to do a lot with the fact that I keep a case
on it.
And since we are talking about the front of the device there is something on the front
of the device that annoys me every single day and that is the most obnoxious notch ever
made for any smartphone.
So because of the notch you cannot see your notifications, you can see two notifications
and that's about it; the other ones don't show up because the notch is too big, so defiantly
annoying, and if you are watching any videos or any movies and you want to zoom in, well
the notch is gonna be in your video or movie, so defiantly annoying; and I see a lot of
people saying that they get used to the notch, well there is no getting used to this notch
because it's so big and it's in your way every single day.
but there is something in the notch there that we don't get with other phones, so we
have two front facing cameras, we have two 8mp cameras and one of them is a ultra wide
lens and that lens is awesome if you are with a group of people or if you wanna show some
of the background whenever you are taking a selfie; and the cameras on the front of
this phone are the best selfie cameras on any phone, of course the software has a lot
to do with that as well, but if you are looking for a phone to take the best selfies this
is it, not to mention that the portrait mode looks absolutely stunning, you can even use
the Night Sight mode with the front facing cameras and you can take like basically pictures
in total darkness and they are gonna look good, so ya we have to put up with the notch
but we get the best front facing cameras on any smartphone.
We also have the second front facing speaker in the notch there and I believe that the
speakers on the Pixel 3 XL are the best speakers on any Android phone, I think that the speakers
on the iPhone XS Max sound a bit better but if you have to choose the best speakers from
an Android phone, well this is the one and this is one of the reasons why I keep coming
back to this phone, the speakers are just absolutely amazing, but once again we have
to put up with that notch so we can have awesome speakers, but ya the speakers are really really
good.
Another thing that's really good is the rear camera, so on the back we have one camera,
just one, a 12.2mp camera and this is the best camera on any smartphone.
Of course it's not only the camera, the software does most of the work but this is the main
reason why I keep this phone with me every single day, the cameras on it are just absolutely
amazing.
If you take portrait mode pictures they turn out really good, if you take regular looking
pictures they turn out, if you take any pictures with this phone they all look really good,
so there is no other phone that takes pictures as good as this.
Of course it would be nice to have like a wide angle lens on the back, a zoom lens and
so on but we don't get that and I guess I have to live with that, but ya, that is the
main reason why this phone stays with me every single day.
Now, the cameras are great for pictures but if you are gonna record videos with the rear
camera, well that it's not that great and than i'm gonna take the Note 9 with me if
I know that I have to film something, because the video quality from this phone is just
not that great.
So, ya the cameras are amazing for pictures, not that amazing for videos and if you film
a lot with your phone I do recommend that you buy a Note 9 instead of this.
Another thing that got better over the last month or so is the battery life, so when I
first started using this phone I was only able to get between 4 to 5 hours of screen
on time, but these days I can get up to 7 hours of screen on time so I never have to
charge this twice throughout the day and even if I would have to charge it, the phone supports
fast charging and fast wireless charging with that fast wireless charger that you can buy
for it and I haven't actually plugged this in in months, I just put it on that charger
when I go to bed and that it's charged for the next day.
So sure you can get better battery life from the Note 9 or the Huawei Mate 20 Pro but as
long as the phone makes it through and entire day without having to be charged that's fine
with me.
Moving on to the software experience, so the phone feels just as fast as it felt in the
first day, so no, the phone doesn't slow down and even though we only have 4GB ram inside
this device, it doesn't feel slow.
Now there are some apps that will have to reload every now and than but I haven't seen
that many having to reload, mostly comparing this to the Note 9 and as I said it feels
just as speedy as it was on the first day.
The Google Launcher is definitely not my favorite, I got rid of that a few days after I started
using the phone because with the gestures and the app drawer, well everything was kind
of confusing, you would try to open the multitasking but than you would open the app drawer and
so on.
So I installed Nova Launcher instead of the Google Launcher and I've been very very happy
with the phone like this.
There are still some issues with the Bluetooth connectivity, so you have a pair of headphones
connected to the phone, you are listening to music and all of a sudden the Bluetooth
connection just fails and than you have to reconnect and i've seen this happening with
my headphones and in the car as well, something that doesn't happen if I'm using my Note 9
for example.
It's not as bad as it was at the beginning when I first started using the phone, than
it was pretty horrible and that would happen like 5-10 times a day, now it only happens
like once or twice a day, but there is still room for improvement.
Some apps still don't work as they should, so for example, Instagram Stories, sometimes
when you try to post an Instagram Story the app just freezes and that doesn't happen on
any other phone, it only happens on the Pixel 3 XL, so, software optimization, or who knows
if the apps aren't built for it or who knows, but it has gotten better over the past 3 moths
but there are still some issues and something that you don't expect considering that this
is Google's flagship device, the phone that pretty much all the manufacturers should look
up to.
So to quickly conclude this video, I use the Pixel 3 XL for 3 main reasons, the cameras
are the best cameras on any smartphone, the speakers here, the front facing speakers are
the best speakers on any Android phone and I can get customizable cases for it, cases
that I couldn't get for any other phones and, well I like having a case that nobody else
has.
The screen is not as good as a lot of other phones available on the market, I mean, it
looks great but it doesn't get as bright, so we can't even compare the screen on this
phone with the screen on the Note 9 for example, it would be nice to have more cameras like
a wide angle lens, a zoom lens and so on, but that doesn't happen with this phone, but
at least we have three really good camera, so basically, the cameras are the main reason
why you would buy this phone, because they are just absolutely amazing.
Alright guys, hopefully you enjoyed this video, if you did like, don't forget to press that
like button, don't forget to subscribe, and I will see you in the next one.
Thanks for watching!