Second Opinion: Google’s Pixel XL and Fi
Another month and several road trips later, still loving both the phone and the service
A few weeks ago I gave my preliminary review of Google’s Pixel XL phone and Fi service…
Since then, I have schlepped about 3,000 miles, including a cross-country trip from the Twin Cities, through Chicago, to New Jersey, and back again. The phone, and the service, performed like the troopers they’ve been advertised to be. Below are some particular highlights of my experience so far.
Amazing Battery Life
More than anything else in this era of hand-held tech, battery life has become one of the most important factors. It’s all well and good to have a device that can do lots of stuff, do it fast, and display it on a pretty screen, but if it’s only going to last a couple of hours doing it, that’s not very useful.
So imagine my pleasant surprise that the Pixel XL has so far demonstrated that I can forget to charge it, or accidentally forget to fully plug in the charging cable, or dislodge it (USB-C cables are somewhat deliberately not very tight fits, it seems), and still get another day out of the battery!
Coverage Lives Up to Hype
Granted, the I-80/90 corridor I was traversing is not exactly sparsely covered with towers, and there were a couple of dead-spots on my trip that are always dead spots because nobody covers there very well, but everywhere I felt I had a good reason to expect a signal, I had one, and usually an LTE signal.
Phone Calls Sound Good!
Oh, hey, that’s right; this is a telephone! You’re supposed to be able to talk to people on it. And guess what, it’s pretty good for that. Like many smartphones, the quality of the actual earpiece speaker depends on making sure it’s resting against your ear just so, but if you get it right, you’ll probably be turning the volume down to avoid ear damage. The speaker-phone mode is also pretty clear, and Bluetooth through the car works exactly as you’d expect.
Integrates Well with Car
Despite the fact that Honda’s head unit explicitly recognizes Apple devices (especially iPod-like devices, when plugged in via USB), I’ve found that the Pixel XL seems to behave more consistently when paired with my 2014 Honda Odyssey than the iPhone 6 Plus did. Among other things it consistently picks up my last audio app (usually Audible) and starts playing from where it left off, while the iPhone would be fine for a couple days and then completely forget what I was doing, requiring me to go in and start Audible manually again. It also connects the pairing faster (not that any car head-unit is exactly speedy in that regard).
Sadly, my car is too “old” to support Android Auto (or CarPlay). That said, I have used Auto mode on the phone itself, which is a lower-distraction mode with big buttons and the ability to read you your messages as they come in. It integrates with Google Assistant (e.g. “OK, Google!”).
Speed
Early reviews of the Pixel XL vs the iPhone 7 Plus suggested that Apple’s competitor to the XL was just slightly snappier at various tasks. Maybe that’s so, but so far, the XL has yet to leave me waiting for anything I expected to happen faster. Apps all load quickly, pages load fast, everything just feels extremely smooth and responsive. About the only thing that seems to take a measurable amount of time to come up is the camera — from a locked state, double-pressing the power button will bring the camera up directly, and it takes…a whole second!
Wrapping It Up
I’m often qualified in my endorsement of things I review, because I know that my preferences are often different from other people’s. That said, at this point I’m prepared to strongly recommend the Pixel XL and Google Fi. Google doesn’t always get everything right, any more than any other tech company, but this time, they seem to have gotten more right than wrong!
