In January, I flew from London to attend a conference in the Swiss Alps (#FirstWorldProblems, I know). I arrived at night and got lost in waist-deep snow on the way to my chalet. It was very cold and very dark. There was no one else around.
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I switched from iPhone 7 to Google's Pixel XL, and I have some feelings about it
The Pixel XL is great. Not perfect. But it's certainly better than the iPhone 7 Plus, by a small margin.
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By the time I found my front door, I had spent 45 minutes staggering around in subzero night air. I used my iPhone 7 Plus flashlight app as a torch, and the battery held out the whole time, with juice to spare, even though it was at the end of the day. My iPhone saved me from hypothermia that night.
That made me realise why people stick with the iPhone: If you want a phone you can rely on, the iPhone is your friend. The battery life was the best of any phone I have ever owned. It was probably the most reliable — least buggy, non-crash-y — phone I have owned so far.
The problem is that on most days I am not lost on a Swiss mountain. Most days, I need my phone to help me work: Email, calendar, camera, social media, notes, and news take up 99% of my smartphone's life. And the iPhone 7 Plus was not great at many of these tasks.
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So when I dropped the iPhone one day and the screen shattered into a thousand pieces, I decided it was time for a change. I took the plunge and switched to Google's Pixel XL, running Android 7.1.2 (Nougat).
It's great.
Not perfect.
But it's certainly better than the iPhone 7 Plus in my opinion, by a small margin.
Last year, when I bought the iPhone 7 Plus, I struggled to enjoy the experience when it became obvious that the iPhone is still not a top-notch device if you need it as a work tool. The lack of a full-function keyboard, its primitive media-sharing tools, and the multiple extra steps iOS makes you go through to navigate from app to app all wore me down.
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By contrast, the Pixel feels faster than the iPhone, the camera is very good, and the battery life is excellent. In addition, it comes with the most advanced version of Android, with guaranteed updates direct from Google, so there are no security issues.
And that verdict comes from someone who was pro-Apple.
After several weeks with the Pixel XL, I've found some positives and negatives.
- The Pixel feels faster.
- The touch-to-wake fingerprint scanner is excellent.
- No home button is cool.
- The snooze alarm is 10 minutes
- overly fussy nine minutes
- It has a swipe keyboard that works.
- Google's apps all work properly.
- The built-in GIF keyboard is awesome.
- A back button that works.
- A menu button that works.
- The Android notification screen.
- Battery life is great.
- It is very reliable.
Negatives
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- The system folder is baffling.
- The phone did not come with earbuds.
- The Uber app is worse.
- The selfie camera has excessive "beauty face," and you can't nix it.
- The volume buttons are next to the power button.
- Android phones come with everything in the default "on" position
The Pixel, in short, is proof that high-end Android will continue to threaten Apple's dominance of the smartphone market.
There is something about Android done properly — as opposed to cheaply — that is very compelling. After all, if Android is as reliable as iPhone, then the two systems compete head-to-head on functionality and usefulness, both areas where Android has long been ahead.
Don't believe me? Check out Samsung's mobile revenue recently, and bear in mind that the 15% increase in unit sales came despite its previous flagship product literally blowing up in people's faces.
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