SUMMARY
The Google Pixel XL 32 GB mobile features a 5.5 Inch display and runs on Android v7.1 (Nougat) operating system. The device is powered by a Quad core (2.15 GHz, Dual core, Kryo + 1.6 GHz, Dual core, Kryo) processor paired with 4 GB of RAM. As far as the battery is concerned it has 3450 mAh. Over that, as far as the rear camera is concerned this mobile has a 12.3 MP, Auto focus sensor and the front snapper is powered by a 8 MP sensor.
MARKET STATUS:AVAILABLEMRP:₹ 66,800
CRITIC REVIEW
Google Pixel XL review: Android’s true standard bearer, with a price tag to match
From the original Nexus One to last year's Nexus 5X and 6P, Google's signature product line-up has had some really great devices. But it's time to look ahead. With some Android OEMs going modular and others doubling up everything from cameras to displays, it was about time that the Nexus brand got a revamp as well. And it did, as Google recently introduced the world to its new vision of what the 'perfect' Android smartphone(s) should be, naming that vision - Pixel.
That's right. The Nexus line-up is gone, and Pixel has taken its place. The two smartphones that the series includes - Pixel and Pixel XL, are Google phones through and through. This means that their entire experience, including hardware design and software, is exactly how Google intended it to be. Not just that, the Pixel duo come loaded with quite a few software-based smarts as well, including the much-talked about Google Assistant. In summation, these two smartphones have been tailor-made to be the standard bearers of Android and carry forward the legacy of Nexus devices. But the million-dollar question is, can they?
We put the bigger of the two Pixel siblings, the Pixel XL, through our extensive testing routine for a few days (and nights) to find that out. So, is the Pixel XL indeed the true Android flagship that we've been waiting for? And even if it is, at a hefty price of Rs 67,000 (32GB storage variant), does it even matter? The answers await on the other side of our full Google Pixel XL review.
READ ALSO:Google Pixel smartphones go on sale in India: 12 things to know before buying
Design and build quality
The Pixel XL is the result of Google's vision of its flagship smartphone's design and HTC's execution of that vision. And it shows. While the design is sure to polarize many, there's no denying the fact that Google Pixel XL is one of the most solidly-built smartphones we've come across. It sports an all-aluminium unibody, with smooth curved edges that blend seamlessly into the flat sides.
The front is home to a 5.5-inch Amoled touchscreen. Above the screen lie the earpiece, an 8MP camera for the selfie-addicted and a proximity sensor. Oddly though, a notification LED is missing. Given how even the cheapest of smartphones today have those, Google's decision to remove it from its flagship truly left us baffled.
What's even more surprising is the part of the front panel below the screen. It's almost as thick as the part above the display but unlike the latter, has nothing. There's neither a front-firing speaker, nor any capacitive/physical buttons (the Pixel XL uses on-screen navigation buttons). Just a thick bar of nothing. This is why when the display is turned off, the Pixel XL's facade resembles a certain competitor's front more than it should.
Flip the Pixel XL, and that feeling of bewilderment grows even more. The rear panel of the Pixel XL is unlike any other smartphone we've seen. Why? Because though the back panel is an all-aluminium construction, its top one-third (yep) is made of glass. This mishmash of two materials makes the back of the Pixel XL look, well, kind of different.
Anyway, the glass section has a circular fingerprint sensor. Its top left corner is where the Pixel XL's 12MP primary camera is situated, accompanied by a two-tone dual-LED flash. The phase detection and laser autofocus blasters, as well as a secondary noise-cancellation mic can also be found here.
Google Pixel 128GB | VS | Apple iPhone 7 Plus 256GB |
| 2150 MHz, Dual core | PERFORMANCE | 2370 MHz, Quad core |
| 5.0 Inch | DISPLAY | 5.5 Inch |
| 128 GB | STORAGE | 256 GB |
| 2770 mAh | BATTERY | 2900 mAh |
| 12.3 MP | CAMERA | 12 MP |
| 4 GB | RAM | 3 GB |
As for the lower metallic section, it's largely clean (and quite smooth as well). There's just Google's 'G' logo at its bottom centre, below which some regulatory information is imprinted. If you look a bit closely at the bottom edge, you can also see 'Phone by Google,' 'Made in Taiwan' and the Pixel XL's model number printed in a really tiny font. There are a couple of antenna lines too, with one running along the width of the lower back and one each across the upper top, left and right sections.
Coming to the sides, the right has the power button situated right above the volume rocker. Both are metallic and have really good tactile feedback. While the power button is textured, the volume rocker is smooth. This comes in really handy in telling them apart so you don't press the wrong button. The left side is mostly bare, except for a single nano-SIM tray at the upper half. As for the top edge, it has a 3.5mm audio jack (thankfully) on the left. Last but certainly not the least, the bottom edge is where the USB Type-C port is. Situated at the centre, the Type-C port is flanked by two exactly same-sized slots. And while both of them look like speakers, only the left one is.
In summation, we'd say that we found the overall design of the Google Pixel XL to be generic. That's not to say it's bad. The Pixel XL's design and build quality is, by all measures, immensely good. But for a true flagship device that's supposed to be the vessel for the best that Android can offer, the Pixel XL looks a tad uninspiring.
Display
A flagship smartphone should have a display that does it justice, and that's indeed the case here. In fact, the Pixel XL's display is what puts the pixel(s) in its name. With a resolution of 1440x2560 pixel, the eye-watering Quad HD panel of the Pixel XL is a sight to behold. Since the display is an Amoled one, colours are extremely vibrant and Black levels are much better. Having a pixel density of about 534ppi, it renders everything from webpages to 4K videos to graphic-intensive games with crisp detail. Viewing angles are extremely good too. The display is quite legible under bright sunlight, even if that requires the brightness slider to be moved all the way up to the maximum. It's protected with a layer of Corning Gorilla Glass 4.
Performance
Google simply couldn't have gone for just any chipset to drive its vision for Android's future, and so it didn't. For delivering the processing muscle to the Pixel XL, it chose Qualcomm's newest chipset - Snapdragon 821. It essentially consists of a quad-core CPU (with two Kryo cores clocked at 2.15GHz and another two Kryo cores clocked at 1.6GHz), paired with an Adreno 530 GPU. While the Pixel XL isn't exactly the first smartphone to have Snapdragon 821 at its heart, it's surely one of the few. This setup is complemented by 4GB of RAM. That looks like a formidable combination, but is it enough?
The answer is a resounding yes. The Pixel XL is blazing fast. As part of our testing, we used the Pixel XL for everything ranging from multi-tab browsing (in Google Chrome) to playing graphic-rich games (like Real Racing 3) to split-window multitasking. And not even once did we encounter the slightest bit of lag, stuttering or choppiness. General UI is quite responsive and apps load up near instantly as well. Playing games for extended amounts of time and recording lengthy 4K videos does cause the back panel of the smartphone to heat up a little, but it's nothing too major. The fact that Pixel XL runs a perfectly stock and highly customized latest version of Android also helps things quite a lot.
And yet, all that power doesn't mean a thing if the Pixel XL isn't good at doing what is any phone's primary job - making and receiving calls. Thankfully, the Google flagship doesn't disappoint in this regard. Having used it as a daily driver for a couple of days, we can confirm that the Pixel XL latches on to 4G cellular networks quite easily. Call quality is generally very good, even in troublesome areas like underground parking lots and elevators. That said, these things are subject to cellular network coverage so individual results may differ.
Google Pixel XL comes with a circular fingerprint sensor on its back. Dubbed 'Pixel Imprint,' it is among the fastest fingerprint sensors we've tested and recognizes fingerprints instantly. It supports 360-degree recognition, but doesn't work with moist fingers. The phone lets you register up to five fingerprints and has a nifty gesture (available in Settings > Moves) which can be used to pull down the notification shade by simply swiping down on the fingerprint sensor.
Multimedia playback on the Google Pixel XL is appreciably good. 4K video content (both local and streaming) plays without a hitch and looks stunning while doing so, thanks to the Quad HD Amoled panel. As for the audio output through the single speaker, it's largely clean but gets a tad distorted at higher volume levels. And the bottom edge placement of the speaker means that if you hold the XL in landscape orientation with both your hands, you won't be able to hear a thing. So make sure you adjust your grip accordingly.
So the Pixel XL can shoot 4K videos, play those 4K videos, run games with console-level graphics without breaking a sweat and multitask like a pro. But for how long can it actually do all that, before running out of juice? This brings it to another very important point - battery life.
Google Pixel XL packs a non-removable 3,450mAh cell. That is quite a respectable battery capacity for a phone this size, but does it fare well in real world usage? It surely does.
During our testing, the Pixel XL's battery easily lasted a day of moderate to heavy use. This included about an hour each of gaming, web browsing and streaming video playback, as well as about two hours of music playback. That's quite a decent figure, especially given the fact that the Pixel XL has a top-of-the-line chipset and boundary-pushing display. But since battery is obviously dependent on individual usage patterns, the results will most likely vary from one user to another.
Camera
For imaging duties, Google Pixel XL comes with a 12.3MP rear camera with f/2.0 aperture. To assist the camera, a two-tone dual-LED flash, phase detection autofocus and laser autofocus are thrown into the mix as well. Google claims that the Pixel XL has the highest-rated smartphone camera ever, with a DxOMark Mobile score of 89. The score is awarded by French software company DxO labs, which calculates the final score after rigorously testing smartphone (and other) cameras against a set of parameters. Now that you have all this information, chances are high that you are all the way more interested to find out whether the Pixel XL's camera is actually any good or not.
We're glad to tell you that it indeed is. Does it mean that the Pixel XL's camera is the absolute best out there? Of course not, this is no DSLR. But that's not what it's supposed to be. It's just supposed to be a 'really impressive' day-to-day usage camera, and that's exactly what it is.
The camera performs exceptionally well in brightly-lit conditions. Consequently, daylight shots come sharp and packed with detail. Colour reproduction is largely spot on, and the camera is near instant to lock focus. Automatic HDR is enabled by default and works its wonder on photos to make them even better in real-time, which is something you can see if you quickly preview a photo after taking it. Low-light images are quite decent as well, though a little bit of digital noise obviously creeps into them.
As for the video recording (both Full HD and 4K), we found it to be equally good as well. What's most impressive is that the Pixel XL does a great job of stabilizing jerky videos, despite not having Optical Image Stabilization. While the absence of OIS on a flagship smartphone is certainly inexcusable, the Pixel XL's Electronic Image Stabilization certainly gets things done quite efficiently.
READ ALSO:Google Pixel, Pixel XL: All you need to know
Software
Power-packed hardware is only one aspect of Google positioning the Pixel XL as the ultimate Android flagship. It's probably not even the most important aspect at all, given the fact that there are already quite a few smartphones available out there that are equally (or even more) powerful than the Pixel XL.
What truly makes the Pixel XL the next evolution of Android platform is the software that forms its core. And if you think it's just a smartphone that runs the newest version of Android, you couldn't be more wrong. Let's talk about the software 'smarts' that make Pixel XL the true Android flagship that Google is positioning it as.
Google Assistant
If you're aware of the whole buzz surrounding Allo, one of the two chat apps announced by Google at its 2016 I/O developer conference, you probably already know what Google Assistant is. And it's this Google Assistant that's arguably the single, most important reason why the Pixel XL came into being in the first place.
That's correct. It's true that the Pixel XL is a pure Android flagship. But even more than that, it's a platform meant to showcase the power of Google Assistant.
Announced at its 2016 I/O developer conference this year, Google Assistant is exactly what its name implies - an intelligent personal assistant. While it might look like a rehashed version of the existing Google Now, Assistant is actually much more than that. Powered by Artificial Intelligence, Google Assistant can schedule meetings and appointments, call contacts, open apps/settings, pull information (e.g. flight itinerary) from emails, serve traffic alerts, find recipes, manage invoices, make calculations and do a lot more, all using simple voice commands. And that's what makes the Pixel XL unique, because it has Google Assistant integrated right into its core.
Android 7.1 Nougat
The Nexus line-up of smartphones has always been used to showcase what's the best and latest that Android can offer, so it's hardly a wonder that Pixel XL ships pre-loaded with the freshest version of Google's mobile OS - 7.1 Nougat. And having used it for a substantial amount of time, we can say that it's quite an upgrade.
Android 7.1 Nougat comes with improvements both major and minor, and these are visible as soon as you power on the Pixel XL for the first time. The setup process looks a little different, although the basic steps essentially remain the same.
However, the changes begin to get more drastic as soon as you get to the homescreen. For starters, there's a brand new launcher (aptly named Pixel launcher) on board. The 'All Apps' button is gone, and the app drawer can be opened by swiping up from the bottom of the screen. There's a pill-shaped Google button on the top left corner of the homescreen, which can be tapped to initiate a quick search.
The Settings app in Android 7.1 Nougat has undergone a revamp as well. Related settings (e.g. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth) are bundled under umbrella sub-sections (in this case, Wireless & Networks). It's a feature lifted straight from Windows 10 Mobile, but works well.
Summing it all up, Android 7.1 Nougat has a bunch of small improvements and features (e.g. Night Light, Display size adjustment and Smart Storage) which all work in tandem to make the overall experience better.
Verdict
The Google Pixel XL has all the ingredients of a true flagship Android smartphone. It has a really sharp Amoled display, ample processing power and a camera that's among the best out there. But what needs to be realized is that the Pixel XL is less about the hardware and more about the software. You're paying Rs 67,000 not for the Snapdragon 821 and 4GB of RAM, but for the Google Assistant and the unadulterated Android experience that runs on that hardware.
But as flagship-class as the Pixel XL is, we just don't think that its software based features like the Google Assistant exclusivity and uninterrupted Android updates are enough (at least yet) to justify the hefty price tag.
We'll conclude this way. If you want to experience Android the way it was always meant to be and don't mind paying the premium for it, by all means go for the Pixel XL. But if you want a value-for-money flagship device that's equally (or even more) well-specced and doesn't cut down on essentials like a notification LED and better water/dust resistance, you'd be much better off going for a Galaxy S7 Edge or an HTC 10.
GOOGLE PIXEL XL 32 GB SPECIFICATIONS
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