Android Oreo Helps Google's Pixel 2 Smartphones Outperform Other Android Flagships (hothardware.com)

MojoKid highlights Hot Hardware's review of Google's new Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL smartphones: Google officially launched it's Pixel 2 phones today, taking the wraps off third-party reviews. Designed by Google but manufactured by HTC (Pixel 2) and LG (Pixel 2 XL), the two new handsets also boast Google's latest Android 8.0 operating system, aka Oreo, an exclusive to Google Pixel and certain Nexus devices currently. And in some ways, this is also a big advantage. Though they are based on the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 processor as many other Android devices, Google's new Pixel 2s manage to outpace similarly configured smartphones in certain benchmarks by significant margins (Basemark, PCMark and 3DMark). They also boot dramatically faster than any other Android handset on the market, in as little as 10 seconds. Camera performance is also excellent, with both the 5-inch Pixel 2 and 6-inch Pixel 2 XL sporting identical electronics, save for their displays and chassis sizes. Another notable feature built into Android Oreo is Google Now Playing, an always-listening, Shazam-like service (if you enable it) that displays song titles on the lock screen if it picks up on music playing in the room you're in. Processing is done right on the Pixel 2 and it doesn't need network connectivity. Another Pixel 2 Oreo-based trick is Google Lens, a machine vision system that Google notes "can recognize places like landmarks and buildings, artwork that you'd find in a museum, media covers such as books, movies, music albums, and video games..." The Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL are available now on Verizon or unlocked via the Google Store starting at $649 and $849 respectively for 64GB storage versions, with a $100 up-charge for 128GB variants.

Comments

Wow, great.

[nightfire-unique]

I mean it's great that it can monitor your audio 24/7 and can make some nice numbers flash up in a benchmark and all...

But, uh.

Replaceable battery? Rugged/IP68? SD card slot? Headphone jack? You know.. things that actually matter?

Re:Fragmentation is not a good thing

[BronsCon]

Google could put an end to it by simply not allowing it in the license agreement. Of course, more than a handful of features have made their way from vendor overlays into vanilla Android, and I'm not sure Google would have considered those features for inclusion had they not been proven beforehand, so maybe there's some benefit to the current system.

I'm honestly torn on the issue. On one hand, the vanilla experience does lend itself to system updates more readily than what we have now; on the other hand, innovation has to come from somewhere and most of what Google adds to Android isn't originating from within Google.

Perhaps, at the very least, Google should require vendors to submit any proprietary drivers so that Google can release vanilla builds for every device; they would also need to require that any carrier- or vendor-specific apps be released on the Play store, to prevent any model-specific features from being locked behind those apps. Then, you could have the vanilla experience on any phone without losing and vendor- or model-specific functionality which may have made you choose that phone in the first place.

Lack

[markdavis]

>"with both the 5-inch Pixel 2 and 6-inch Pixel 2 XL sporting identical electronics, save for their displays and chassis sizes"

And they also share the:

* Lack of headphone jack
* Lack of wireless charging
* Lack of swappable batteries
* Lack of SD card support
* Lack of serviceable battery?

But not the lack of price... so, go ahead and cough up $650 or $850, anyway, because we are giving the public what they want. And to think I am STILL using a Nexus 5 which has at more than half of the above lacking features, and was around HALF the price.

Re:Fragmentation is not a good thing

[Kjella]

Well project Treble is supposed to make it so that they can update Android separate from the vendor implementation, from what I understand one side effect is that all phones could run stock Android. Whether vendors will let you is another story, but hopefully at least now you'll get timely and long lasting updates.