put the Pixel 3 side by side

with last year's model,

you'll find something that looks

a lot like a Pixel 2.5,

at least until you look at the display which

is slightly style challenged

thanks to the giant notch.

Look past the looks, though,

which is sometimes difficult and you're going

to find a truly excellent smartphone.

There's no doubt that the Pixel 3 is a

nice piece of hardware.

It's an all aluminum and glass build

with a few interesting touches.

The rear has a two tone finish.

Again, it is all glass,

while on top it's glossy,

the bottom is a much more matte finish,

which not only matches the previous Pixels,

but still feels really nice by adding a little

bit of grip to the phone.

Importantly, this also enables not only the

IP68 water resistance,

but importantly, the brand new fast wireless

charging on the Pixel 3.

Which is all fine and great until you realize

that, uh, well, a slight drop onto concrete

might shatter the entire back of your Pixel 3.

Specifically, if a certain friend of yours

borrows the phone to shoot some footage and

the wind blows it onto the concrete.

- You guys weren't supposed to tell him.

- For real, though, this dropped

from like three feet and the entire back

is shattered and even the

front corner is shattered.

- Yeah, I mean I think it hit just right,

but this is gonna crack either way.

- Yeah.

- But it does scratch pretty easily, here.

- So, fun fact, don't drop your Pixel 3,

or the glass back will shatter and you'll have

to ask Jerry to rig everything very kindly

to fix your phone for you.

- Get a case at AustinEvans.com/PixelCases.

- Great, now I gotta like make that a URL now.

Something I appreciate is we have the same

squeeze feature to access Google Assistant

from last year.

In my opinion, this is way more useful

than say if a company were to put a

hardware button on the phone,

which can't be re-mapped and is only useful

for a very useless voice utility feature, Bixby.

Anyway, all you do is just squeeze it,

what's the weather tomorrow?

- [Phone Voice] Tomorrow in Claremont

it'll be sunny with a high of 85 and a low of 61.

- It should be no surprise that the Pixel 3

only has a single USB C port,

there's no headphone jack to be found,

but what's nice is,

is that not only is there a pair of USB C

headphones in the box,

but you also have the USB C power cable,

the fast charger, and importantly,

a headphone jack adapter and a USB A adapter.

You know, like none of the things

that Apple includes with the iPhone X,

which is more expensive, so, yeah.

The stereo speakers have returned,

and while they're supposedly 40% louder,

I've gotta say the Pixel 3XL sounds noticeably

better than the standard Pixel 3.

Now a big part of that, I think,

is that this one seems to distort a little bit

at higher volumes,

whereas the XL sounds a lot richer,

and specifically doesn't do that same distortion.

Now mind you,

neither of the phones are going to compare

to something like the Razer Phone 2,

but they sound pretty good,

just the 3XL is a lot better.

It might be a small thing but something

I appreciate on the Pixel 3 is the

smaller camera bump.

When you lay it down flat on a table,

it doesn't really rock as much,

especially compared to the iPhone.

(tapping phone)

The Pixel 2 had the best camera of last year

and arguably this year as well,

and it should be no surprise that the Pixel 3

steps up even farther.

One of the most impressive things here is

not only just the dynamic range,

but the overall color.

Things look so, so good on this camera.

And I don't think it's really an exaggeration

to say that this makes every other smartphone

camera look bad.

Seriously, I mean just look at some

of this stuff.

The portrait mode is also fantastic.

Even though it doesn't have the telephoto lens

to get that extra depth data,

Google does such a good job of being able

to isolate a subject and really pull it

out of the background of a photo.

I've said it before, I'll say it again,

this camera is straight up awesome.

And a lot of it really just does come down

to the level of AI, machine learning,

buzz wordery, that really just makes

this camera dope.

I'm just gonna keep saying that

'cause it's really good.

While the Pixel 3 still has a single

rear facing camera,

what it has new this year is a

pair of front facing shooters.

A standard angle camera as well as a much

wider angle which is what,

like 184% wider than the iPhone XS?

- [Ken] Yeah.

- (laughing) Did he almost he almost,

did he almost like into the back of me?

- [Ken] Yes.

(Austin laughing)

- What's cool is that there's a zoom slider

that will seamlessly move between the

front facing cameras,

and when you go wide,

it is really, really wide.

So, you know, when you wanna take a photo

with all your friends,

you can get them all a shot with the Pixel 3.

Right, friends?

Friends?

Friends?

(camera clicks)

Yeah, there we go.

All my friends, with my Pixel 3, it's great.

- [Matt] Take that, Wes.

- This is what 4K video looks like straight

off of the Pixel 3.

So not only can you tell if there's a decent

amount of dynamic range,

and pretty good stabilization,

but on top of that it has really good auto focus.

So all you need to do is tap on a subject

and it will track it around,

so as I get closer or farther away

from the camera,

the focus should naturally follow.

The only real downside here is that there

is no 4K60 support,

unlike most of the phones this year,

but with all the processing that's been

going on in here,

the Pixel 3 looks seriously dope

as far as videos are concerned.

At the launch event,

Google heavily focused on features like

Cloud computing, AI, machine learning,

other cool buzz words,

but what they didn't talk too much

about is performance,

which actually is really, really solid.

The Pixel 3 has very standard specs for 2018.

You've got the Snapdragon 845,

only four gigs of RAM as opposed to six or eight,

and 64 or 128 gigs of storage.

If that sounds a bit underwhelming in a world

where the much cheaper Pocophone has the

same processor and more memory,

then you aren't alone.

At the press conference I was kinda disappointed.

The 845 has been around for quite a while

at this point,

and the next generation is definitely

right around the corner.

Now this is a complaint I've levied at other

phones that have come out recently,

including the Galaxy Note9,

but it's just as well that here on the Pixel 3,

this is a smartphone with specs that will

be outdated very shortly.

However, after about 10 seconds with the Pixel 3

my doubts quickly vanished.

This thing is straight up fast.

Now when you compare it to the OnePlus 6,

which up until now has been the

Android speed king,

this is even faster and even smoother.

Now that might not be a huge surprise

considering that Google hopefully knows

a thing or two about optimizing

phones for Android.

And to be fair there are definitely

some other advantages, here,

including not only is it running Android Pie

right outta the box,

they've got the animations nicely tuned.

But the long story short here,

is it is incredibly fast,

it's incredibly smooth,

and it's, well, maybe not the most outdated

spec in the world 'cause it works.

With Android 9 Pie onboard you're getting a lot

of nice little additions,

but one of my favorites is

the gesture navigation.

Now, I'll be honest,

this is one of my favorite parts

of using the iPhone X.

It's real easy to move between apps,

and it is almost as intuitive here on the Pixel.

There are a lotta other smaller features,

including some that will be coming

to previous Pixel devices,

but my favorite, by far, is call screen.

The way this works is similar to Google Duplex,

is if you get a call in and you don't wanna

answer it, you can just allow Google to screen

the call and you get a live transcription.

(phone ringing)

Oh, look, Matt's calling.

I'm going to screen it.

- [Phone Voice] Hi, the person you're calling is

using a screening service from Google,

and will get a copy of this conversation.

Go ahead and say why you're calling.

- [Matt] Is Mr. Austin Evans

happy with his long distance provider?

- [Phone Voice] Do you need to get a hold

of them urgently?

- [Matt] Yes, this is very urgent.

- [Phone Voice] Just so it's clear,

go ahead and say more about why you're calling.

- [Matt] We have a really great deal on

collect calls and really happy to,

- [Phone Voice] They can't talk right now,

but they'll give you a call later.

Thanks and good bye.

(phone beeping)

- (laughing) I love it.

It even automatically hangs up.

This is like the greatest thing ever.

That's so cool.

- [Matt] That's so rude.

- I'm never gonna answer anyone's

phone call ever again. (laughing)

Looking back, I think it's safe to say

that the Pixel 2 has aged well,

but it's hard to avoid the elephant in the room.

While the Pixel 2 did pretty well,

the Pixel 2XL had some major screen issues.

Not only the XL have some color issues

right outta the box when it was brand new,

but it also has some fairly severe

burn in with those early units.

Now to be fair,

software has solved some of these problems,

and they've replaced most of the issues