Interesting as it may sound, the truth is that Google, the company behind Android, has not made an Android phone. At least not in the way Apple makes the iPhone; this is changing now. Several days ago, on October 4, Google announced Pixel and Pixel XL. Google said the Pixel phones were the first engineered and developed in-house. Although technically Motorola phones, when Motorola was a Google-owned company, were also Google official phones, and so are the Nexus devices, the Pixel phones are indeed slightly different. Although Google has sold phones using its Play Store earlier, this is the first time it has taken full ownership of the phones.
Pixel and Pixel XL will reach shops in India in the coming days. Pre-orders have already started, and Google has begun reaching out to prospective consumers, telling them about the Pixel phones’ virtues as it sees them. Here at India Today Tech, we will look better at the Pixel phones in the coming days. But for now, based on a day I have spent with the Pixel XL, there are some quick thoughts on what I make of the Pixel XL (and, up to an extent, Pixel).
Design from HTC
Although the Pixel XL is a Google phone, it looks unmistakably like an HTC phone. Well, there is a reason for that. The Pixel XL is a phone manufactured by HTC, even though it carries Google’s Big G logo. And its design is a mishmash of HTC phones, primarily the HTC 10 and the HTC A9. As you expect from a mishmash, the design will leave a user with mixed emotions. It is not a bad design, but it is not great either.
The Pixel XL uses an aluminum metal shell with the left and the right edges carved with clean, straight lines, which we have seen earlier on the HTC 10. On the other hand, its curved corners reminded me of the HTC A9 and the iPhone 6. This is a familiar design, and we have seen it repeatedly on high-end — and now mainstream — phones. However, the Pixel design of unique bits comes from the rear glass portion and fingerprints the scanner. The phone has a conveniently located –, and I must add a high-speed — fingerprint sensor on the rear cover. Android in the Pixel XL seems fast and beautiful with its clean, flat-layer-based user interface. Unless you count some of the Google apps as unwanted, there are no unwanted apps here.
All in all, my impression of the Pixel XL in terms of design is that this is a very useful design and somewhat boring for a phone that costs Rs 67,000. The bezels are thick, and various design elements give a fairly generic look. Although with a slim profile and a 5.5-inch phone, a compact enough frame means you can use Pixel single-handedly. Well, most of the time. The Pixel XL doesn’t look good compared to a phone like the Galaxy S7 Edge. But it is more convenient to use than the iPhone 7 Plus.
Google’s Android and possibly a killer camera
The big story with the Pixel XL is not its design. It is the software inside it. With Pixel phones, Google is taking charge of Android back from the phone makers in China and Korea instead of trying to give users a version of Android that will be fast, good-looking, and feature-rich. The company is also promising timely updates to Pixel users.
All of this sounds very promising, and Pixel XL highlights some of Android’s better aspects. It comes inbuilt with Google Assistant. It seems smarter than Siri, although I need to spend more time with it. Then there is a new app drawer, which is swiped up from the bottom edge, and it looks better than the app drawer by default in Android 7, aka Nougat. The Pixel XL runs a more recent version of Android — Android 7.1 — and has the exclusive Pixel launcher that Google has created.
Google has added a couple of more unique features to Android 7.1 on Pixel XL. The most intriguing of these seems to be the shortcuts. You long-press on an app, and it shows a shortcut. For example, a long press on the Chrome app shows a shortcut for opening a tab or an incognito tab. This is very neat.
Overall, Android in the Pixel XL seems fast and beautiful with its clean, flat, layer-based user interface. Unless you count some of the Google apps as unwanted, there are no unwanted apps here. And we often see no tacky animations or colors on phones made by China-based companies.
It also helps that the Pixel XL has pretty good hardware inside it. It is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor, has 4GB RAM, and has 32GB of internal storage. The phone’s AMOLED screen, at first glance, looks beautiful, showing rich and deep colors. It also seems to be a very bright and vibrant screen, although this will be tested properly once the phone is used outdoors in bright sunlight.
iPhone 7 Plus vs. Pixel XL: On the left is an image by iPhone, and on the right is a photo by Pixel. The iPhone exposed the image better and had accurate colors. Pixel images have more details and richer colors. Talking of hardware, the best part of the phone is probably the camera. We haven’t yet really put the phone’s camera through its paces, but it seems to capture images with great detail and extremely punchy colors. Although speed-wise — focus and processing — it does seem slower than the camera in the iPhone 7 Plus, or for that matter, the camera in the Galaxy S7.
Summing it up
In the coming days, I will look better at the Pixel XL and see how well its battery holds up, whether the phone heats, whether its software has bugs, and, most importantly, how well it works with the Jio network. You guys do want to know how well it works with Jio. But all of that is for later. My impression of the Pixel XL is mostly positive, although the design could have been better. For example, it doesn’t have a water and dust-resistant body, which is a big miss at a time when both the Galaxy S7 and the iPhone 7 have it. Similarly.
The glass panel on the back cover looks tacky and useless. But then there is the software and features. The Android 7.1 Nougat inside the Pixel XL looks fantastic and seems to work very, very well. It is the kind of software that will make you love Android. Although software is not everything, it matters greatly in a “smartphone.”
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