zGoogle hosted an event recently where they showcased some absolutely beautiful new products – let’s take a look at their new smartphone.

Meet Pixel 3

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Now that that’s out of the way – here’s what you need to know (if you’re still interested).

Camera

“The best camera phone you can buy“

Those aren’t my words. That’s what reviewers are actually claiming.

With new technology, Google has managed to:

• Fit in more people in a single selfie (like the Facebook Portal?) thanks to their second front-lens that enables wide-angle images
• Unlike (every) other competitor, the Google Pixel 3 has a single lens on the back, and is packing 12.2 MP photos (The iPhone XS has 12 MP)
• Selfie cameras with 8 MP (iPhone XS has 7 MP)… 2 of them.

Google believes that what makes their camera wonderful isn’t any extra spec, or faster aperture, or a wider lens (…whatever those things mean). They have been working tirelessly on machine learning (check out the Google Clips).

You know how when you zoom in on things, the quality is horrendous? Google’s Super Res Zoom feature works on making you enjoy going to concerts and sporting events (since you know… you spend more time on your phone recording and taking pictures than actually appreciating it). See the comparison for yourself.

Phone features

• Google Photos
  • No need to invest in an external hard drive, in Dropbox, or any other storage application. The Pixel 3 comes with Google Photos ~ a.k.a. free unlimited storage for all your photos and 4k videos.
• Fast Charge
  • “Fast charge. Lasts all day”
  • With a 2,915mAh battery (a biiiiit lesser than the Galaxy S9’s 3,000mAh), the phone could potentially be used all day on a single charge. But. Yes. There’s always a but. With the power that Android 9 Pie is packing and how intensely good the Pixel 3’s camera is… it’s probably not lasting you all day.
  • And yes, comes with wireless charging. What did you expect? It’s almost 2019 (he says as he has an iPhone 6s that has never felt any wireless charge whatsoever).
• Adaptive Battery
  • “What the * is this!?” First of all, don’t be rude. Adaptive battery is this (new?) software that essentially understands what apps you don’t use constantly and limits the battery used for them.
  • “You use LinkedIn once but Instagram all day? FINE I’ll limit the amount of battery for LinkedIn then so you have more time to stalk people on the gram“.

Operating System

Android 9 Pie is a whole blog post of its own – (but also the cool kids are calling it Android Pie).

You have Hey Google (which is what people are using instead of Ok Google nowadays). You have Google Assistant who’s literally giving you a reason to not even touch your screen anymore (ask her to tell you something good).

Lastly, Screen Time. Now… I know I’m an Apple fan boy and everything but the concept of “screen time” does sound a bit familiar eh… and for those who don’t know what it is, basically have the phone tell you what apps you’re spending time on and force you to reconsider your life (a.k.a stop using that dang phone so much).

Style

Just Black. Clearly White. Not Pink.

Now listen… Good points, bad points. The colours are good, I’ll for sure give you that. The pink is cute, the white is minimalist, and the black is classy.

But.

(Did I already mention that there’s always a but?)

Aren’t all of these a bit simple? There’s yellow Nokias, the iPhone has a peasant version of the XS with a bunch of colours and they occasionally come out with that red smartphone. So wouldn’t we expect at least a colour or two more from the Pixel 3?

Price and deals

2 phones. 2 prices.

The Pixel 3 with a 5.5″ display starts at $799. Pretty fair.

The Pixel 3 XL with a 6.3″ display, $899. Also quite fair (specially when comparing it to those exorbitant iPhone prices…)

That being said, I did appreciate a few of Google’s offers. Buy a Pixel 3 (or XL) on the Google website and you get 6 months of YouTube Music Premium.. for free.

ALL IN ALL, it’s a nice phone. Specially if you’re into camera stuff – it for sure might just be the best camera phone out there.

Would I buy it? Sure… if it was an iPhone and had iOS instead of Android. But nice phone, nonetheless.