Google Pixel 3 review

On the back of my last year's review on 2017 Pixel 2 phones, I was excited to get my hands on the new 2018 Pixel 3 flagship phones which showcases all the mind blowing updates they accomplished on this device.

Obviously this device takes the crown for the most leaks to a point where it made me laugh. But having said that, I still needed to understand if the normal deal breakers was enhanced this time around (i.e. Design, Display, Camera and a bit more).

I managed to pick one (Pixel 3 XL) for myself on its public debut at the store in the UK.

For most of part of this review, I would use XL to cover what has changed or new, unless said otherwise.

Design

The design language on both the variation are nearly identical. Lets start from the back.

Pixel 2 sported the glass and the aluminium back but the new Pixel 3 has got a material refresh with the two-tone all glass back (Gorilla Glass 5) build which allows for wireless charging if you use such a thing. The bottom of the back has this frosted glass finish which is super smooth now but lo and behold can be scratched quite easily. The frames are glossy too which makes gripping better than the previous model.

What I did find is that the Pixel 3 XL though it fits in one hand, takes two hands to operate.

Pixel 3 isn't radically different from its predecessor and one might think its rather dull and tame when compared to many other flagship phones. Maybe its Google's way of keeping their price point below 1K.

Display

Moving to the front side of the device, the 3 XL ports a 6.3 inch QHD+OLED 523 ppi display whilst the normal 3 ports a 5.5 inch OLED 443 ppi screen. They are absolutely great screens. Google has finally got it right this time. Pixel 2 screens were problematic P-OLED often desaturated and leave ghosting burn-in. A huge mistake! 3 XL screens are made by Samsung this year and without a shadow of a doubt they are beautiful. There is also more screen real estate for display and less bezel with an 83% screen-to-body ratio (up from 76%) on XL. That’s some progress.

Both the normal 3 and XL ship in "Adaptive" display mode by default, which bumps the colours and saturation making them look great. The normal 3 comes with a warm white point whilst the XL comes with a more accurate white point but with a cool shift at angles but both are near identical and beautiful. 

Notch!! I said it. Its horrible any which way, just to house the two front facing camera and the top speaker on the XL. Even more so, it has a face!

Ok lots of other phones port notches too in comparison. iPhone X has more or less has the same notch volume (space usage) but its stretched(wider) across whilst the Pixel 3 choose the condensed(squashed) and deep look. By doing so, they eat into the screen real estate. Again not to my liking. But over time, I have not spent obvious time worrying on the notch like any other phone but still want this to be smaller in the next iteration of the phone. If you absolutely loathe it, you can still get the smaller Pixel 3 and not the XL or play around with the developer setting to disable it.

 Sound

 While we are still on the topic of notch, I did say they housed the top speaker in the notch, the phones sport a front-facing stereo speakers. With the new hardware and software enhancements, they are a lot louder and crisper than the Pixel 2. I certainly enjoy listening to music with it. At times, I found the bottom speaker a bit louder than the top one but that’s me being pedantic.

Quick note, Google has included a wired pixel buds shipped along with the phone, which to me was the worst designed headphones. It finicky and I am left with a slight residual pain from the loop after listening.

 Camera

I was left wondering if last year's phones were the best cameras on a smartphone, what will Google do this year. Google has not disappointed me this year as well to say the least. They have excelled once again in this area. Still sticking to one camera theme on the back, they have pushed the boundaries with their software and image processing abilities. 

 A one liner here: It has me confident when I take photos that its going to be good!  

This year they have introduced some new modes.

Top Shots: This received a lot of credits because of its potential. This requires motion photos to be on, which is turned on by default. If you remembered the Pixel 2 has this turned on for motion photos. This time around, when a photo is taken and motion is detected you get the motion edition. Now by using the "select shots" option in the menu, you can select the shot which you think is best suited as it grabs 2-3 seconds of image data. Its an awesome handy feature in my opinion. The only downside is that, the extracted photo is 1024x768 resolution (1M resolution).

Super Res Zoom: This attempts to use Machine Learning to make up to the fact that there is no secondary optical camera. It works with alongside the current HDR algorithm which takes several shots at a time and combines them for added details. Zooming in will automatically activate this mode between 2-5X zoom modes. Since there is natural handshake introduced whilst zooming, Google gets all the metadata during this motion and can intelligently combine them for the output. For a phone without the secondary optical camera, the results are impressive in most cases.

Photo Booth: Its an automated selfie mode which takes photo when you smile or make your face funny. No need to press the shutter button.

Playground: Its just a rebranded version of the AR sticker mode.

Night Sight: Currently not yet rolled out and touted to be a game changer once its available for photos taken in low light.

Rear cameras are identical on the normal 3 and the XL. Google introduced the second wider angle camera on the front to get more in selfie mode. I still think Pixel's have the best selfie cameras on any smartphones out there.

Clicking to auto track on the view finder makes it follow the object with accuracy making the object always stay in focus. Again a confident booster.

 And yes, photos can be saved in raw format for post processing. 

Other stuffs:

1. Best vibration motor in the business (haptic feedback!)
2. The default gestures, which I am not a fan.
3. Google Lens to identify things in front of the camera
4. Now playing features, which identifies the song playing in the background.
5. Google assistant
6. Call Screen ( Haven't rolled out to UK yet!)
7. Digital wellbeing

My Verdict

Yes it has the best camera and best software! Strongly recommend it if you are still thinking about migrating to a Pixel device.

If you have a Pixel 2 phone, I don’t find obvious reasons to migrate to the Pixel 3 range per se as most of the software upgrades will still make it to the older Pixel models.

This year's phone seems to be an iPhonification of the Android phone. If I wanted an iPhone I would have bought one! There are other Android phones which tends to harp on productivity and do a better job at it, like the Samsungs or Sonys. They are about the same price point but packs in more hardware and software upgrades making the Pixel 3 rather basic. I for one feel Google is slightly confused this year without following Apple first. This is not the Google I signed up for. I want to let out a battle cry here…Don’t follow but lead!

Something which resonates to the early Android days. Apple beat Google by launching iPhones when Google were deliberating on their hardware with their "sooner" and "dream" devices. Since Apple came out with the iPhones, they had to match it with the touch screen. And this catch up to Apple's progress is still playing on!!!