hey what's up it's Jerad with State of Tech and today I wanted to talk about
the pixel to XL and the s9 plus from Samsung and which one you should buy now
there's a lot of opinions going around out there as to which phone is better
and you know I have both of them I've purchased both of these phones with out
of my own pocket I bought the the pixel 2 XL when it
first came out and of course pre-ordered and received the s 9 plus on its launch
day and have had some time to spend with it as well so both of these phones are
fantastic you know there's a lot of similarities between the two of them so
I figured I'd start out there first of all they're both pretty close to the
same size phone I mean with a case on them especially the cases that I chose
here they're just about exactly the same size as far as you know the space that's
gonna take up and I put cases on my phones I know some of you don't
I put cases on them because I just want to protect them I want to keep them from
getting scratched up ding dented cracked or any of that stuff and especially the
s9 with it being a full glass back and then with the the pixel it's only
partial but you can also dent the metal that the rest of the phone is made out
of so sighs they're about the same I put the case on them just to protect them
and also it does make it a lot easier to find the fingerprint scanner on the back
now of course the pixel being that the fingerprint scanner is kind of all by
itself out there in the middle makes it a little bit easier but on the s9 with
the fingerprint scanner being part of the whole collection of sensors here of
course it's better than when it was next to the camera that's definitely an
improvement that they moved it underneath it from the s8 being next to
it to the s9 being below it but I still feel that I need a little bit of
something there and the case helps but the similarity here is that both of
these phones have fingerprint scanners on the back now they're both
water-resistant which is fantastic most flagship smartphones these days are
pretty water resistant I've had both of these phones underwater and
had no problems there they both have stereo speakers however there's one
difference between the two that I'll talk about soon here but they do both
have stereo speakers and get relatively loud they both have a pretty decent
battery as far as the size goes it's not as big of a battery as you could
probably wedge into a phone of this size but the fact of the matter is the
battery life is all-day battery life on both of these phones I haven't had a
problem with battery life yet especially with Android after you've used it for a
couple of days I think the software starts to kind of learn your behaviors
and better optimize memory usage and of course the cache the caching ability
that Android has to kind of keep things you know some stuff in memory that you
do commonly I don't know exactly how that works but it definitely optimizes
well I know as far as the s9 goes it has an additional layer of optimization in
there just to kind of show you this is something that's not available this
whole like device manager is not on the regular Android or regular stocky
Android and the pixel this is a Samsung thing so you can kind of go in here and
optimize they have a lot more options in their phone as far as being able to
optimize for battery performance and stuff like that
however the pixel just does a really good job without even having to mess
with all of those settings it just does a good job out of the box base storage
when you buy both of these phones is pretty much the same you can buy a
higher storage version of the pixel XL which is what I decided to do I wanted
an additional storage in my pixel because there's no expandable storage
here of course with the s9 there's expandable storage and a fixed internal
amount of storage so similar things here I mean both of these are excellent
phones as far as Android goes they do a good job of having all the features of
course the s9 is known for having a lot more features over the top and the
Samsung phone used to be really heavily customized as far as the user experience
goes and made it more feel like a standard Android experience so there's a
lot of things that are going to be different on these phones and so we're
going to go through though these are the things that I feel would
be the definitive decision-making factors as to whether or not you would
choose one over the other now the first thing that's different is super
noticeable and that is the fact that the pixel has one camera whereas the s9 has
dual cameras now the both phones have fantastic cameras the pixel does a great
job of utilizing just one camera now you know they were maybe criticized a little
bit and saying you know most of these phone manufacturers are now putting dual
cameras because you can get that zoom the pixel was said to have the ability
to zoom without needing that it can digitally zoom a little bit but in my
experience is whether I'm comparing the pixel to this phone or any other phone
if you zoom in to X on the pixel XL you're losing a bit of the clarity of
the image having the dual camera is better if you want that zoom now as far
as the actual photo I'm showing you some side by side photos here on the screen
of of these photos out of these phones now when comparing the cameras being
that this one only has one camera this one has two if we're just shooting with
the wider cameras just to be a little bit more fair both phones are producing
amazing images now some will say that the s9 produces may be more of a little
bit of a true-to-life image because there's a lot of processing going on in
the pixel image however if you're going for image straight out of camera without
making any modifications like I want to take a picture I want to share that
picture I do prefer the photo out of the pixel over the photo out of the s9 it's
just personal preference but with a little bit of tweaking you can make that
image look exactly the same so both cameras are really great so I guess what
you're getting as an advantage out of the s9 is having that zoom camera and
then you know being able to play with some of those additional features now
portrait mode despite the fact that the pixel only has one camera portrait mode
on the pixel is light years better than portrait mode or live focus or whatever
they call it on the s9 on the s9 it's almost unusable it just doesn't do a
very good job with edy detection some of the blurring and stuff
that happens just isn't very natural on the pixel it just does it a great job
and especially if you're trying to take portrait mode pictures of something
besides a person for example an object which I use portrait mode a lot on a
smartphone simply to blur out that background and kind of give it that that
more that look like it came out of a DSLR style camera the pixel just does a
great job at that especially with objects that are not people the s9 not
so good so I pretty much never use live focus or portrait mode on on the s9
because it's just not really that good now where the s9 does shine is in its 4k
capture because it has 60 frames per second the pixel does not it has 4k but
at 30 frames per second both cameras have pretty decent and beefy front
shooters I will say though that the image that comes out of the pixel as far
as a front-facing like selfie type of portrait it definitely looks better even
after you go and kind of disable some of the selfie mode stuff that the that this
phone has the s9 has get rid of the smoothing that it adds and all that
stuff and make it more natural I still like the front-facing camera on the
pixel much better now the designs of the phones are a little bit different and
one will say that that doesn't matter to me because I've got cases on them but as
far as the styles of the phone go they're very different the s9 is very
smooth and glossy I'm just showing you some photos now it's very nice looking
phone very classy very fingerprint it catches your fingerprints all over it
but it's very smooth and sleek looking design the pixel has a little bit more
of I don't know maybe an industrial look it's made out of metal because there is
no wireless charging there just is a little bit of a glass top on the back
but it is more of an aluminum phone it has more of a matte finish I would say
to it and I like the style of that phone a little bit better from the front you
really can't tell too much of a difference they both look very similar
on the front but on the back they definitely are different looking
phones so with that said like I mentioned the s9 has that wireless
charging which is a nice touch Samsung pay is also a huge plus that
this phone has of course you can make payments with Google pay using NFC but
you have to use supported terminals whereas the s9 with with Samsung pay
works on even older terminals that don't have modern technology in it and I think
that's a really cool feature the s9 has a little bit more usable screen space if
you look at these phones side-by-side I'm gonna try and align them here as
best as possible you can see that the s9 does have a little bit taller of a
display not by much but it is a little bit taller but of course it is wider as
well because there's less bezel on the side the s9 kind of has the slightly
curved edges and the screen goes all the way to the edge some people like that
some people don't I found that the s9 does provide a little bit more of an
immersive experience as far as the image goes but when it comes to sound quality
the pixel beats out the s9 because it has dual front-facing stereo speakers so
both of those speakers are pointing at you rapping sound around you whereas on
the s9 you have one that is front-facing and one that is rear or downward firing
so you have one speaker coming at you and one of them kind of shooting past
you at an angle and while sound still is excellent out of s9 it's just not as
good and not as loud as it is out of the pixel - or the pixel 2 XL so the s9
definitely really shines with its display so if I go here and just kind of
crank up the the brightness here both of them do look good the display on the
pixel is definitely nothing to be sad about it's a great display but Samsung
just builds the best displays out there and this display is also much higher
resolution with having the up 2 quad HD plus display which is great on the s9 if
you want to crank it all the way up I'm kind of in the middle of the road you
can go full HD you can go wqhd and then you can go or I think they call
it F HD or something like that and then you can go quad HD and I like it right
in the middle which is higher-resolution the s9 is also more
dense than the pixels then the pixel funny just notice that as it came out of
my mouth but nonetheless both displays look good but Samsung it doesn't matter
Samsung always hands-down has just the best display only rivaled really to the
iPhone and of course Samsung makes iPhones displays right now so there you
go so as I mentioned earlier you can get 64
gigs only if you're here in the US and most places on the s9 of course you can
get the pixel and a 64 gig variant but you can get more internal storage out of
the box on a pixel however the pixel does not have expandable storage whereas
the s9 you can put a micro SD card in there and expand the storage quite a bit
so I have a 64 gig chip in here so I have essentially about the same amount
of storage in both phones this one's all internal this one's internal with an
external sd card which of course I could increase even to 128 gigs and have a lot
of internal storage space what's nice about that is I can pop out the micro SD
card pop it in my computer all of my photos and videos that I have taken with
the phone or on that card whereas I think Google really wanted you to
utilize Google photos and the unlimited backups and stuff that you get you're
not gonna get you can use google photos on the s9 but you're not gonna get
unlimited high-resolution backups you're only gonna get just high-quality backups
so I guess that's a little bit of the difference there Google's gonna give you
that unlimited high-quality backups for the next couple of years
whereas Samsung you're gonna have to back up your own high-quality images but
you're gonna have more storage options there now both of these phones do run
Android but they're quite different in how that works of course you're gonna
get the latest version of Android on your pixel at all times because that's
Google's device Samsung tends to kind of trail behind a little bit somewhere
usually between eight to ten months behind with their launch of the latest
versions so as like with the pixel right now you can be running Android 9 kind of
the or what they're calling Android 9 is kind of the beta and then later on in
the spring maybe early summer they'll actually release that and you
can run it whereas on this Samsung phone you're probably not gonna get Android 9
until around early next year in 2019 maybe late of this year 2018 if we're
lucky so you're gonna get you know the latest and greatest on the pixel just
because it's Google's phone not to say that a Samsung falls behind too much
Samsung definitely has a lot of additional features that they throw into
their software which is probably why it takes a little bit more time for them to
upgrade the OS because there's all those additional Samsung features that they
throw in there not only just with the touchwiz launcher that they use I tend
to kind of change that to other launchers but a lot of the back end
features a lot of the gestures and stuff that Samsung really had first before a
lot of these other manufacturers started putting gestures and natively so I'm
looking forward to seeing what Android 9 is gonna bring just you know as it moves
over to other devices such as Samsung to see what Samsung is gonna do with those
added features with that said personally I'm a little bit more of a fan of stock
Android than I am a bunch of the added features I don't use many of the added
features that Samsung adds on with the exception of Samsung pay and maybe you
know having the some of the additional features and the camera and stuff are
nice and so there's some things that Samsung does that I like but I
definitely don't utilize a lot of their additional features like edge panel and
edge lighting and all those other things I like to just turn most of those off
even though they're cool and they can be used in an interesting way for me I just
turn them off there's less distractions on my phone the better and also the less
things running all the time the longer the battery life so I like to keep it
that way another thing that I've really grown to enjoy is how easy it is to use
a Google assistant on the pixel of course you can squeeze the phone and it
launches it and then it just naturally launches better using the voice commands
whereas on this phone the s9 it wants to use bixby Bixby's horrible if you want
to use Google assistant on it you have to do a little bit of workaround you
have to bixby you have to kind of get that out
of the way and not all the time is it easy to launch with the voice command
running Nova Launcher I will connect I will set it up so I can do a double tap
and actually have Google assistant launch and then that way I'm right in
Google assistant and ready to go one of the last features that of course
everybody will mention is the fact that the s9 has a headphone jack and the
pixel - does not don't understand why they didn't do that maybe to be more
like the iPhone but I like having the headphone jack there because if you're
in a vehicle that doesn't have full audio Bluetooth support then you can
plug in you don't have to remember your dongle and all that stuff so with that
said let's quickly recap some of the things that are different of course with
the s9 you have kind of the latest and greatest in technology and quality and
display and all that stuff and added features with the pixel - you have more
refined software that you know Google of course gives you the quickest updates
and all of that so one could say maybe you know if you are wanting to be on the
bleeding edge you might want to go with the pixel over the s9 the camera on the
pixel is fantastic but it doesn't have you know some of the additional features
that the s9 has that make it a great experience if you're making one of these
phones here predominant camera pure Android like I said before pure Android
on the on the pixel here is definitely enjoyable but if you like some of the
additional features that Samsung throws in of course a lot of them you can
toggle on and off you don't have to use them you can get rid of them if you
don't want them and lastly I think the most important thing is the the fact of
price of course the pixel is a cheaper phone as far as price goes than the s9
depending on where you buy the s9 you're gonna pay a different price I recommend
going and buying it unlocked from Samsung because you're gonna get it for
almost $100 less depending on where you're buying it from some retailers may
sell it unlocked but most of them are not because they're taking advantage of
what the carriers will pay them for activating those phones so with a pixel
it has a couple different size two different size options couple different
color options and then of course the price differences in the amount of
storage that you're gonna get with the s9 you're basically either
getting an s9 or an s9 plus and a couple of different colors it only comes in 64
gigs if the price is just gonna vary depending on what carrier you're going
with and where you buy the phone so really it ultimately is up to you for me
I really like the pixel because I like the new software I know that on the s9 I
will have to wait a long time I also like the fact typically in the past and
probably into the future is that the resale value of a pixel is gonna be more
than an s9 because you can get the s9 pretty much anywhere and even though you
can get the pixel you know in Verizon stores and whatnot I've just found that
Samsung phones don't really hold their resale value too well in comparison to
other phones such as the pixel so for me I like the pixel because the price is
less you get the latest features as far as Android goes it's got a great camera
it's got excellent battery life it checks all the boxes for me but it
definitely is not the newest thing and a lot of times I want the newest thing so
sometimes the s9 depending on the time of the year is the newest thing so it
really comes down to you and what's important to you both are fantastic I
tried to show you kind of both sides of these devices I know there are a lot of
videos out there that are comparing me so it really comes down to what features
are important to you and the price and with that I'll leave the decision in
your hands let me know what you think down in the comment section below
what phone do you prefer what features are important to you I know what
features are important to me but I like to hear from all of you as to what's
important when you choose a phone what do you use all the time share that down
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