Does anyone care about the Pixel 3?

[nOOky]

Arggg I don't know how I missed it but the Mr Shield screen protectors I ordered have the black border. I guess for $8 I'll try one anyway. I'm wondering if it is really necessary anyhow, my 2 year old phone never had one, and it's display is still like new.

 

[sze5003]

I can't believe google doesn't require a signature for the package. Looking at my tracking it says left at front door, signature not required. Hopefully it is still there when I get home.

 

[Trader05]

I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't require it either (i may be mistaken between ordering from Apple direct vs AT&T shipments).
Nothing like reading Reddit about P3 screen quality to up the anxiety of getting a new phone. Apparently the regular size P3 has an LG panel vs Samsung in the 3XL. I'm hoping its a good panel without noticeable grain or color changes. Worst case i'll return it for the money paid for a premium device.

 

[Oyeve]

I ordered a P3 for my work phone. Basically its free and I will probably end up selling it here like I did with the P2 last year. Anyone who has one can you comment on the earbuds? They look fugly but how do they sound?

 

[sze5003]

Set up my 3XL..didn't take long at all only about 5 minutes. Very impressed with the way the screen looks compared to my 2XL. Much more vibrant and crisp. Also the haptic feedback changed. It's more subtle and feels much nicer than before.

Speakers are definitely better than the 2Xl. They sound cleaner and have a nice kick to them. I'd say about 40% better sounding, deeper too. Google says the vibration you feel from the speakers is normal.

As for the notch it's big but once you get used to it it's not as noticeable. The nicer quality Samsung panel they have on the 3Xl makes up for it.

Camera is also a lot sharper and quicker to snap pics. You can even zoom in and it's still clear. Will be interesting to see how night mode turns out once that's out.

 

[VashHT]

Got mine yesterday but I was busy so took me a while to set up in between other stuff. Screen looks much better, no blue shift at an angle and the colors look much better (even after they added the new color profiles the yellow and red looked really off on the 2xl).

Haptic feedback does feel a lot better, not sure what it is but it seems more subtle when typing but still vibrates pretty strong when getting notifications or calls.

Haven't used the camera much yet but overall it feels faster. I played around with the super res zoom and it seemed to be pretty nice, definitely better than normal digital zoom.

For some reason web pages seem to load way faster too, they seem to come up instantly pretty much whereas on my pixel 2 and other phones there's like a short delay after you hit go.

Overall it seems pretty nice so far, I've heard the audio recording isn't that great again so hopefully they fix it, you'd think after last year they'd make sure it was good at launch.

 

[Trader05]

Mine had an estimated delivery today and now pending delivery date lol figures.

VashHT, did you get the regular size or XL?

 

[sze5003]

I also noticed web pages show up instantly too. Wonder how long this will last with the 4gb of ram.

Also saw reports of the speakers being louder than one another. When I tested this they seemed fairly similar. The thing is the bottom speaker on the XL is larger and has more bass than the top. The top speaker is much smaller. On the 2XL both speakers were roughly the same size.

These speakers here are louder and offer more depth from what I can tell.

 

[Anubis]

i have the 3.came yesterday standard not XL. i downsized from the 2 XL because im tired of giant phones, the 2XL/3XL is just too large when used with a case

its basically the same phone as the 2xl just smaller with a better screen

 

[Capt Caveman]

Got my Pixel 3 XL this morning. Feels great in the hand. The matted painted back of the phone is more slippery than I thought it would be based on the reviews. Took about ten minutes to copy everything over from my Pixel 2 XL. Display is nicer but not as vibrant even at the adaptive setting compared to the Pixel 2 XL's saturated setting. If they had flipped the placement of the top speaker and the light sensor(like the Pixel 2 XL), it looks like they could have put in a speaker the same size as the bottom one. On the Pixel 2 XL, the grills on top and bottom are the same size. The volume is definitely louder. The notch does take away about half of the possible notification icons wish they had designed it to use two rows on both sides of the notch.

 

[sze5003]

Got my Pixel 3 XL this morning. Feels great in the hand. The matted painted back of the phone is more slippery than I thought it would be based on the reviews. Took about ten minutes to copy everything over from my Pixel 2 XL. Display is nicer but not as vibrant even at the adaptive setting compared to the Pixel 2 XL's saturated setting. If they had flipped the placement of the top speaker and the light sensor(like the Pixel 2 XL), it looks like they could have put in a speaker the same size as the bottom one. On the Pixel 2 XL, the grills on top and bottom are the same size. The volume is definitely louder. The notch does take away about half of the possible notification icons wish they had designed it to use two rows on both sides of the notch.

I don't use adaptive brightness because I found out it drains the battery faster. If you turn off adaptive brightness the phone becomes brighter. Although in Android 9 they lowered the brightness scale. Mine is set at 55% and it's plenty bright on the 3XL. Try it out and see if it makes a difference.

 

[Capt Caveman]

I don't use adaptive brightness because I found out it drains the battery faster. If you turn off adaptive brightness the phone becomes brighter. Although in Android 9 they lowered the brightness scale. Mine is set at 55% and it's plenty bright on the 3XL. Try it out and see if it makes a difference.

Didn't mean Adaptive Brightness but Adaptive Color. Looks like they replaced Saturated on the 2 XL with Adaptive on the 3 XL in the Color settings. Saturated is much more vibrant(possibly to being unrealistic) than Adaptive.

 

[Carfax83]

Got my mostly white Pixel 3 XL 128GB yesterday. Coming from a Pixel 2 XL, I wasn't expecting much of an improvement to be honest (from hardware at least), but the phone so far has impressed me. The screen in particular is amazing! Watching HDR videos on YouTube is a sight to behold on this phone. Google really did an amazing job calibrating the colors on this Samsung made panel. Also the volume and clarity from the speakers is leaps and bounds better than on the Pixel 2 XL.

So basically, the screen and speakers on the Pixel 3 series are the two standout hardware features that are significantly much better than on the Pixel 2 series. As for the 4GB of RAM, that's an nonexistent issue as far as I'm concerned. I don't believe Android requires more than 4GB of RAM, and I never had any problems with my Pixel 2 XL, nor do I foresee any issues with this Pixel 3 XL. At any given time, I always have at least 1.2GB of RAM that is free on my Pixel 3 XL, the same as it was on my Pixel 2 XL. And this is even after heavy app usage and multitasking.

The reason why apps get reloaded on the Pixel phones isn't because of lack of memory. It's more a power saving feature on Android 9 called "adaptive battery" which prevents those apps from using power if they haven't been re-accessed in a certain period of time, or if they are used infrequently. One could say that the Pixel phones are perhaps a tad too aggressive when it comes to this, but if you don't like it, I suppose you could always disable adaptive battery in the settings. As for the RAM, it uses power whether or not it's being utilized, so adding more RAM to the Pixel phones would require a larger battery like the Note 9, and or a reduction in resolution a la OnePlus 5T. Case in point:

As you can see, the OnePlus 5T has 8GB of RAM compared to the 4GB on the Pixel 2, yet the Pixel 2 XL has a 77.78% increase in screen resolution compared to the former. Even with a much lower resolution screen and a similar sized battery, the OnePlus 5T only has an 18 minute advantage in up time compared to the Pixel 2 XL. And that was on Oreo btw.

The only people I can see that would benefit from more RAM on the Pixel phones are the extreme power users or phone reviewers that love to indulge in unrealistic scenarios like having multiple games open at once.

I mean, on my PC I have 32GB of RAM, and yet even I don't have multiple games open at the same time ​

 

[Zivic]

I bought a xl 3 coming from a oneplus 5 ... I am fairly disappointed at my $900 purchase...
speakers sound odd (muffled) at less than peak volume. Even at peak volume they aren't 'that' loud to warrant the giant notch for front facing speakers. my wife has the one plus 6 and that implementation of the notch is pretty seamless (relatively speaking) and I'd almost say it has as loud of a speaker
screen is OK, but has bad blue color shift when viewed from an angle. say you set it down on a table in front of you, it is extremely noticeable. my oneplus 5 has none of this, and wife's 6 has about half of what I see on the pixel
Scrolling has an odd effect to it, almost like a stuttered jelly effect. something about it bothers my eyes in a way I haven't experienced with other phones
again, back to the notch... even something like youtube will end up giving you some strange formatting due the notch. I think I might have to experiment with the developer option and "turn the notch off"

Build quality seems ok, but I think the frosting of the back glass is going to look horrible in a few weeks... but most of my phones looked roughed up in a short time, even with a case on them.

I bought the phone mainly for the speakers, maybe that's why I'm disappointed. from a central viewing angle the screen is nice, but it isn't OMG nice like some would imply it is. maybe because most users are coming from the pixel 2 which had a subpar screen?

IMHO after spending a day with this phone, you buy this phone for the camera; which was far from my top priority in a phone; and/or the software experience. I could possibly fall into the later category as I appreciate the updates and cleaner android. but honestly, I had a great experience with my software on my one plus devices that the early software updates that I used to buy the nexus phones for, were something I really never missed the last few yrs.

I know I have IP rating with the pixel, somewhat of a selling point (and possibly why the speakers sound odd)....... I am a fresh market produce farmer and my phone gets exposed to some adverse conditions. my oneplus 5 device handled wet conditions, sand, dust, like a champ without a formal IP rating. Better than any previous device, including previous oneplus 3T that didn't make it through a few months of my work environment.

one thing about the oneplus devices that I really liked was the dash charging. Not sure anything is as good out there in the market. hoping the pixel charging is in the ballpark and I'll be happy.

i guess the question is, if I am so happy with oneplus, why buy a pixel?....
again, mainly for the speakers, I could also walk into BB and buy it outright. I think I found some value in the IP rating and I have a good friend that says I have to stop handing over my money and information to the oneplus company

 

[Trader05]

Ugh looks like my phone is in limbo at Fedex with no delivery date and pending. I think this is the last time i'm selling my old phone and using a crappy phone in between. This 5S is a lag monster.

 

[sze5003]

I think I may want to RMA my 3XL. I noticed after a day or so that my bottom speaker will have some distortion when listening to someone talking or watching for example a YouTube review. It's more noticeable at lower and medium volume vs at higher volume.

You can hear a buzzing echo after words are spoken and it seems to only happen from the bottom speaker. With music it's not very noticeable. I wonder if they can correct this with software updates or if all of them are like this. That's my only gripe right now about it and once you hear it especially watching something where people are talking, you can't really not notice it.

It's not very apparent in music though.

Edit: It may be software related. There is a thread on xda. If you download equalizer fx app and disable the default Google fx app then set the 230hz range to -15db it gets rid of any distortion but you also loose the bassy effect of the default speakers. They are still very loud.

So I didn't like that app, I uninstalled it and rebooted the phone and the speakers went back to default. But now I watched a few YouTube videos and the distortion from the bottom speaker seems to be gone at least for now when people are talking.

 

[Raduque]

Im gonna replace my note 4 when it stops doing everything perfectly - which could well be 5 years from now.

Could also be tomorrow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxynote4/comments/6771kp/note_4_mmc_read_failed_problem/

 

[DigDog]

Could also be tomorrow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxynote4/comments/6771kp/note_4_mmc_read_failed_problem/

In the last 10 years my attitude to tech gear has completely flipped. I used to want MOAR POWAH because i grew up in the 70s and 80s when technology was garbage and newer was always better. Computers in my time would struggle with webpages and even playing a mp3 was considered multitasking. You can never have too much power.

And then things just changed. We reached the poit where "do i need this" is a thing. Im typing now on a Note 4 that i bought around 2014, i kept it in a leather/plastic case that has kept it like new, and it still works flawlessly. I cannot think of one thing that im unsatisfied about.

So i put it to you. WHY do i need a new phone?

Why do i even need a new pc. I got a 4670k delidded at 4.2 and a 770 gtx i havent even overclocked because no game i play requires it.

Ive jumped onboard the SSD wagon and the 144hz monitor too, but atm im left with no wants or needs. Everything i own works perfectly.

 

[sze5003]

I agree with today's phones you really don't need a new one every year. If only my younger brother would stop demolishing his phones then I'd keep mine longer too. He gets all the hand me downs because the parents can't afford to buy him a decent phone. He does work but only during the summer and uses that money for books and stuff for school. Wish I was in his shoes and could get nice things from an older brother so I don't have to spend all this money.

 

[Oyeve]

Could also be tomorrow.
https://www.reddit.com/r/galaxynote4/comments/6771kp/note_4_mmc_read_failed_problem/

Mine did this last year. Doesn't even attempt to charge the battery anymore.

 

[Raduque]

And then things just changed. We reached the poit where "do i need this" is a thing. Im typing now on a Note 4 that i bought around 2014, i kept it in a leather/plastic case that has kept it like new, and it still works flawlessly. I cannot think of one thing that im unsatisfied about.

So i put it to you. WHY do i need a new phone?

I'm not telling you you need a new phone, but I am telling you that Note 4 could last 5 more years or 5 more hours. Just never know when that eMMC failure will hit you.

Mine did this last year. Doesn't even attempt to charge the battery anymore.

I loved the Note 4, it was one of the best phones I've ever owned. But once I found out about this I realized all Note 4's were ticking time bombs and I unloaded mine ASAP.​

 

[Oyeve]

My Pixel 3 came in today. It's ok, nothing to write home about. Fast, fluid, bare. I guess that's what people want. The earbuds are pretty good. I'm gonna use it for a bit for my work phone. Android 9 takes some getting used to. The camera is merely adequate. But any phone today can take very good pics. wireless fast charging is very slow imo.

 

[sze5003]

My Pixel 3 came in today. It's ok, nothing to write home about. Fast, fluid, bare. I guess that's what people want. The earbuds are pretty good. I'm gonna use it for a bit for my work phone. Android 9 takes some getting used to. The camera is merely adequate. But any phone today can take very good pics. wireless fast charging is very slow imo.

I'm curious what you are comparing the camera to. Most reviewers are saying it has one of the best cameras on the market at least as far as phones go.

 

[Oyeve]

I'm curious what you are comparing the camera to. Most reviewers are saying it has one of the best cameras on the market at least as far as phones go.

I'm comparing to my note 9 and s9+.

 

[sze5003]

I'm comparing to my note 9 and s9+.

Oh yeah those have good cameras too so in that case it's a matter of preference. I've never owned the samsung phones, family members always had them and that's one thing I always wanted in my phones, finally a really good camera.