Long term Review on Google Pixel 2 XL

Introduction

Last year Google finally got serious about smartphones, and not just smartphone operating systems (an area it's been winning in for years). The Pixel line isn't just an overpriced Nexus wannabe as the haters will say, and you need to look no further than the cameras (and especially camera processing) employed to realize how much of a departure it is from the Nexus lineup.

The original Pixels were both welcome and shocking - in their price points, but also when it comes to looks and their bezel-embracing similarity to Apple's phones of 2016. Now though Apple has the iPhone X and Google has gone back to the drawing board to come up with the Pixel 2 XL. A decidedly more modern-looking successor to the XL from last year, we've thoroughly reviewed this handset already. And if you're interested in our suite of standardized tests and objective impressions you're welcome to take a look over there.
This long-term review is going to take a deeper dive into what it's like to actually live with the Pixel 2 XL, as the main and only phone, for a longer stretch of time.
We'll try to answer the questions you might have about the device, regarding things that aren't covered in our proper review. For example, can you actually get used to that screen? Learn to enjoy it even? Is the Pixel 2 XL a huge improvement over its predecessor? Does it really take such amazing pictures? (OK, so you probably know the answer to the last one). We'll also cover how easy it is to set up and let you know about any niggles and issues we've encountered in day to day use. Let's jump in and find out if the Pixel 2 XL really is worth your hard earned cash.

The following article is the first in a series of long-term reviews - a format which we haven't attempted before. While our regular reviews are focusing on assessing every aspect of a device's performance in the most objective way possible, the long-term review is where we will give you a more subjective look - an outline of what it's like to actually live with a specific smartphone every day. We would appreciate your feedback on this new format in the comments section, and we'll do our best to incorporate your suggestions into the next iterations.

Setting up the Google Pixel 2 XL

Setting up a new device exactly as your old one has always been a mixed bag. The OS itself has theoretically had a backup and restore mechanism built-in for ages, but this has never worked 100% reliably. So various phone makers have filled in the gap with their own solutions either alongside that or replacing it, to wildly varying degrees of success.
The result is that you never know what to expect once you choose the "Import backup" option upon setting up your new phone. In some cases all the apps you had installed on your old phone show up on your new one. But sometimes you only get a subset of them for reasons that are entirely anyone's guess.
Then there's the issue of app data: you should always be ready to sign on every single app on your brand new phone.
And transferring your custom settings? Once again, who knows. A few (or most) may be transferred sometimes, but you often have the whole menu to go through in order to really feel that the new phone is actually yours.
In other words, setting up a new Android phone has always been a frustrating mess. Yet there's finally some good news on this front. Going from an old Pixel to a new Pixel is more seamless than the process has ever been in the Android space. That's not saying much, considering how bad things usually are in this respect, but while the experience still isn't 100% niggle-free, it's as close to that as it's ever been. And what's left in the frustration department is actually mostly the fault of Android app developers, not Google's.
Here's how it goes when you switch from a Pixel to another Pixel (and if you've been around the Android block a lot, you may need to pinch yourself in order to believe the following). You choose to transfer stuff from your old device to your new one (when you set it up for the first time), then connect the two through the USB-C cable, follow the on-screen instructions, and a while later (depending on how many apps you have installed) everything will be on your new phone as it is on your old one. Oh, and we mean everything.

Settings

Google accounts transfer over of course, though you will be asked to sign in to each and every one, as a security precaution. What might surprise you is that every single setting you have customized on your old Pixel will be carried over to your new one. This includes things like Do Not Disturb rules, ringing volumes, as well as the name, pasword, and band used by the Wi-Fi hotspot function. This list isn't exhaustive because laying out everything that gets transferred in this process means we'd have to simply go through every setting there is, but hopefully you get the picture.

Some of the transferred settings

A note about Wi-Fi networks - your new phone will 'remember' the same ones as the old one and their saved passwords so it will just magically auto-connect to one even if it's never actually seen it before.
In fact, this goes even further because Pixels offer to automatically turn on Wi-Fi when you're near a trusted network, and if you had this setting on for your old device it will be on for your new one - pair that with the fact that it has the passwords and it means that the first time you visit your parents' house with your new phone in hand it will automatically turn on Wi-Fi and connect to their network. It's like magic.

Apps

All of the apps you had installed on the old device will be installed on the new one. This process may take some time, obviously, depending on how many you have.
The specific way you organized your home screens on your old phone will be transferred over too, complete with app icon placement and widgets.
Interestingly, your camera settings are carried over as well, which may be a tad surprising when you notice it. So if you like shooting in 16:9 even though that lowers the resolution of your pictures, you don't have to dig into the Google Camera settings to switch to that - the app already knows your preference. Text messages make the jump too, but that's been expected for decades at this point. Contacts are cloud-synced anyway, so that's not an issue, and Google has finally (at some point) fixed the very annoying bug that saw your contacts' photos transferred to a new Android phone but only in incredibly low resolution.
When you're dealing with a third-party app, one of two things will happen. If you're lucky, the developer of said app has used Google's mechanism for backing up data, and it will feel like magic. You just open the app and everything inside is as it was on your old phone - you're logged in, and all your settings are exactly the same. Developers that enable this experience really deserve to be praised, because they've made switching handsets a lot easier than it used to be.
A final note on going from an older Pixel to a newer Pixel: because it's all so fast and 'just works', you may feel a bit underwhelmed if manually setting up a new device is something you passionately look forward to. All those hours spent installing apps, tuning settings to your liking, and familiarizing yourself with the UI and its features - you won't have any of that. What you do get is a switching experience that's now very close to being perfect.

All smooth, all the time

One of the biggest problems with the original Pixels from 2016 was a funny one. No, not their bezels, nor their lack of water-resistance or front-facing speakers or any of that. We're talking about trying to describe one of their most differentiating features in a very crowded Android smartphone space: let's call this 'smoothness'.
Comparing numbers is easy. Look at a few spec sheets, see which has the biggest numbers, and there you go - perfect smartphone found. Right? Wrong. A handset can have the highest-clocked CPU and the most amount of RAM, and yet, in day-to-day tasks, perform worse than a competitor with 'lesser' specs. A 21 MP camera can take worse photos than a 12 MP snapper. Two phone cameras can take identically beautiful pictures, but one of them requires you to wait 2 seconds between shots - there's no spec sheet box for something like this.
Then there are the benchmarks. While they're usually decent in synthetically evaluating device performance, the keyword there is "synthetically". Some are more representative of day-to-day use than others, but none are perfect in this regard.
Did the 2016 Pixels top the benchmark charts? No, but regardless of that they did feel like the smoothest Android smartphones ever released. How can you describe smoothness in words? How can you show smoothness in a video? We haven't entirely figured this one out yet, so you're going to have to take our word for it: while the OG Pixels were smooth, their successors do not disappoint in this regard either. The 2017 Pixel 2 XL is, in fact, even smoother than its predecessor.
That probably has something to do with the more powerful chipset it employs, but we've had plenty of Snapdragon 835-powered devices coming out this year and the Pixel 2 XL still feels, subjectively of course, to be just a little bit smoother than any of its competitors. We can argue whether that's because of the vanilla software experience or undisclosed optimizations made by Google, but the following fact is still true in 2017: if you want an Android device that matches (and even, in some cases, outdoes) the latest iPhone in terms of smoothness, that's the latest Pixel.
The 2 XL flies in every task you want to throw at it, but the most important thing is consistency. Every Android phone can render the UI in 60fps at certain times, but how consistent it is in not dropping too many frames when the going gets tough is what makes a device feel better to use day in and day out. The Pixel 2 XL excels in the consistency department, improving upon an already very good formula employed by its predecessor.
Like the Chrome browser, the Pixels and their entire software experience seem to have been crafted by Google specifically to not get in the way of the task you're trying to accomplish. They will readily perform whatever it is you want, and strive not to make your experience frustrating in any way while doing that. In fact, "lack of any frustration" is perhaps one of the best things about using the Pixel 2 XL and this comes from a phone reviewer spoilt by using the latest and greatest smartphones for years.
It never feels like you're fighting the device, it never feels like you have to put up with a sub-par experience designed by a committee somewhere, and the phone never gets in your face, figuratively speaking.
It's just there, always listening for your command, always ready to shoot the next amazing image, always at your service but never in your way.
None of these things can be accurately conveyed through numbers of any kind, unfortunately, which is one of the reasons Google still faces an uphill climb when it comes to actually making its Pixel line a mass-market success.

Battery life

If you're looking for a more scientific approach to how long the Pixel 2 XL will last you on one charge, make sure you read the dedicated section in our regular review. Here we'll be focusing on how those numbers feel in real life use.
To quickly get to the point, the device should be able to make it through one day of use for most people. Only if you are a true power user with incredibly demanding needs you may find that this isn't true for you. Subjectively, the battery life of the Pixel 2 XL is even better than what its predecessor was capable of, in roughly the same usage scenarios.
Here's an example. With mixed Wi-Fi and 4G use and Bluetooth and Active Display on all the time we managed to achieve almost 4 hours of screen on time from more than 27 hours off the charger, and with 9% battery still left. With only Wi-Fi connected throughout the day and Bluetooth off, 6 hours of screen on time are easily achievable for one day's use - you might get even 7 or 8.

Battery life example

It's true that most high-end smartphones in this day and age offer at least decent battery life - we're thankfully past the point when that was a big issue. And the Pixel 2 XL doesn't disappoint at all in this regard. Yet what it's connected to still has a definite impact on longevity. If you only use cellular data, then your mileage in this department is very dependent on how good your reception is.

Camera

Yes, the camera is as good as everybody says it is. Google has decided to fix a hardware problem - how small a camera needs to be in order to fit in a smartphone, and what that downsizing does to its output in terms of quality - with software. Machine learning, artificial intelligence - you can use all the buzzwords du jour if you want to, the end result is that Google's HDR+ processing algorithms are still amazing for what they can accomplish with the hardware on offer.
If you're interested in checking out camera samples from the Pixel 2 XL, make sure to go through the assortment found in our review. Every photo we've shot ever since only solidifies our opinion that this is one of the best, if not the best, smartphone camera of the year.

The dreaded screen issues are not so bad

Ever since the Pixel 2 XL came out, there have been many reports about its LG-made P-OLED touchscreen not being up to par with Samsung's best panels. The internet has been filled with reports of more and more issues with the phone's display, and all of these have definitely contributed to many people either holding off on purchasing a Pixel 2 XL or outright deciding against that - especially when you consider it's not inexpensive by any stretch of the imagination.
This isn't going to be an objective take on the Pixel 2 XL's display, but we wanted to let you know how its biggest reported issues translate into the day-to-day use of the handset, if they are as big as the internet made them out to be, and how likely you are to notice each one and be annoyed by it. So let's address them one by one.

Blue shift

Perhaps the most pervasive criticism of the screen has been that it will basically turn blue when you look at it from an angle. Most OLEDs suffer the same fate, but the issue here is that the Pixel 2 XL shows that infamous blue tint much sooner than other handsets - at much lower angles. This definitely happens on our unit, and it's definitely noticeable. There's also no denying that it is worse than other OLEDs in this regard - especially Samsung's. The LG V30 is, in fact, quite similar.
We think that most people are very unlikely to have a problem with this even if they notice it. If your use case involves showing other people lots of videos on your device then they may not be impressed. But for normal activities the blue tint will not make a dent in the overall experience.

Burn-in and/or image persistence/retention

Burn-in is one of those things that all OLED panels suffer from, but it's been reported to be much worse in the Pixel 2 XL, where it supposedly appears much sooner. If it really happens on your screen, you would notice it best where the navigation buttons usually are, when you're watching videos or simply looking at a full-screen grey image.
Burn-in is permanent, while image persistence isn't, but we're not going to be debating which of them the Pixel 2 XL suffers from. What's important to know is that even if it does appear (and it hasn't for us), for most people this will be another of those things that you only really notice it if you go looking for it.

Light navigation bar background in Settings and Google apps

The good news is that Google has recently taken some steps to alleviate this issue by making the navigation bar background light grey in Settings in Android 8.1 and many of the company's apps now employ this trick too.

Black smear or ghosting

This occurs when the pixels need to quickly transition from showing black to color. Since OLEDs display black by switching off those individual pixels, the issue here seems to be about how fast the phone's panel can pull off switching them on again.
This is definitely something which we observed on our unit, but you only notice it when you are using the phone in the dark and the brightness level is all the way down. When you scroll the screen contents in these circumstances, the black areas seem to linger for a while. It's looks like a form of ghosting. You can observe an example of this in the animated gif below.

To put your fears to rest once more, this 'issue' is not exclusive to the Pixel 2 XL. The same thing can be observed on any other recent phone with an AMOLED screen. And it's really not all that bad and most of you will not even notice it.
A quick look with a bunch of test subjects in our lab revealed the issue is more or less visible on all phones with AMOLED screens and the Pixel 2 XL was not the worst offender in any way. Surprisingly, the Galaxy A8 (2018) didn't show any noticeable ghosting while the Galaxy S8+ and the Galaxy Note8 did and to the same extent that the Pixel 2 XL did.

Dull, lifeless colors with default setting

Google chose to go for showing toned down colors on the Pixel 2 XL when it launched (more so than on the Pixel 2) and this quickly backlashed. The color saturation just wasn't at the level we people were used to from using other Android phones. This is no longer an issue because Google has since added an additional option in the Display color settings - it's called Saturated and does exactly what it says on the tin.

The Color menu in Settings > Display has three options now

Bottom line: it's not really that bad

After a few weeks of using it as the main and only smartphone, we can conclude that the display is definitely not in the same league as those featured inside Samsung's flagships from 2017, or the iPhone X. However, most of the hysteria surrounding the Pixel 2 XL's panel has been just that. The internet blowing things out of proportion? What a surprise.

It's not all sunshine

On the previous page we told you that using the Pixel 2 XL every day is a surprisingly frustration-free endeavor. That said, the phone definitely isn't perfect, and over a few weeks of using it as a main and only device, we found some things that aren't necessarily to our liking. None of these fully detracts from the usually stress-free experience, but we want to point them out nevertheless.
Here's a quick one to get started: although your ringtone volume preference is transferred over when you move from another Pixel (including whether to vibrate or not), the actual ringtones themselves aren't. So if you added some of your own tunes to the Ringtones folder on your old phone, you'll need to manually move them to your new one. Oh, and since Google keeps changing the built-in tones if you used one of those on your other Pixel you simply may not find it on the new handset. All of this applies to notification and alarm tones as well. That's nitpicking, we know.

The display

We had an entire chapter dedicated to the most commonly reported issues with the Pixel 2 XL's screen, so we won't rehash those. We did find some other mildly annoying things about it though, and they all have something to do with adhering to the premier trends of the past few years in the mobile world.
First off, the "2.5D" arced glass coupled with the thiness the handset sometimes makes for annoying accidental touches and there is no palm rejection alghoriths here.
Depending on the way you re used to holding your phone, you might find the navigation bar sitting pretty low on the device's face to an extent where you need to get used to constantly readjusting your grip of the phone in order to reach it.
Finally, let's talk content. 16:9 videos don't make the best use of the available screen real estate but the situation is even more ridiculous for pictures, which are shot in the conventional 4:3 aspect ratio. If you shoot all your pics at the maximum resolution, when viewing them on the Pixel 2 XL's screen about one third of it will be black letterboxing.
That's definitely not ideal, and now that the whole mobile world seems to have embraced tall aspect ratios perhaps it's time to find a solution and actually fill those screens with content or useful UI elements. Starting with the G6, LG was definitely trying to do something in this direction but so far they seem to be the only ones.

Active Edge

This is Google's version of HTC's Edge Sense - you squeeze the Pixel 2 XL's frame and this summons the Google Assistant almost like a genie out of a bottle. The toggle to turn this on is buried in the System submenu of Settings, and for good reason. You might enjoy using it, but we haven't been able to because even in its least sensitive iteration, where you need to squeeze the hardest for it to register, we still always managed to activate it by mistake when taking the phone out of a pocket.
There's an additional annoyance here, namely the fact that you can't remap Active Edge to trigger anything but the Google Assistant. We understand that the company wants to push that onto people as much as possible, but you can already invoke it both by long pressing the Home button and just speaking to it (with the "OK Google" or "Hey Google" hotwords).

Fingerprint sensor

The fingerprint sensor is well placed and it works. It's fast but for some reason, there are times when it doesn't recognize the fingerprint, or you get a "finger moved too fast" error. That creates a frustration that's only amplified by how quick it is when it does recognize your print. You immediately get used to the instant unlocking and expect that to occur every single time. This is clearly something you can live with, though.

Dirt, scratches

Dirt, dust, and sand love to get trapped in where the screen's upper bezel meets the Pixel's metal frame. Speaking of which, said frame has developed a couple of rather visible scratches near the display's side bezels on one of our units, and those have occurred without a drop - simply by taking the handset in and out of pockets.

Jack's gone, Bluetooth still hit-and-miss

As you surely know, the Pixel 2 XL went the 'modern' smartphone route and ditched the good 'ol 3.5m headset jack. Yes, a dongle comes in the box, and yes that works. However, this omission is still headache-inducing in certain scenarios - like if your car doesn't have Bluetooth (or you're having issues with that) and you'd like to connect the Pixel to its AUX input. That obviously works with the included USB-C to 3.5mm dongle, but if it's a long drive we're talking about then at some point you're going to have to stop listening to music in order to charge the phone. Definitely not ideal, this.
Or maybe you have a multiple-hundred-dollar set of wired headphones you love, and would like to use those with your Pixel 2 - once again, make sure it's got enough charge before you start your music listening session.
And then there's Bluetooth. Bluetooth on Pixels has always been a pain point for some - this was true for the first generation devices, and it's the same for the second-gen units. Depending on the accessories you try to connect, you may be among those who never encounter a problem, but it's likely that you will - especially if you're trying to hook up the Pixel to your car, be that the factory-installed system or an aftermarket kit.
Even now, with some accessories you can still face issues like the phone not actually connecting 50% of the time (solved by cutting power to the accessory/car and then turning it back on or turning Bluetooth on the handset off and then on again); or saying it's connected but still playing music through its own speakers; or saying it's connected to multiple devices when it isn't, and other bugs like that. The list goes on, unfortunately, and how lucky you are with Bluetooth on a Pixel depends on your specific setup.

Conclusion

Living with the Pixel 2 XL day-to-day is a breeze. A warm, soothing breeze. There used to be a time, not so long ago, when if you wanted a frustration-free smartphone you'd have to go for an iPhone. Despite some of iOS' limitations, Apple's devices have gained the 'just works' mantra - for most people, most of the time, at least - and with good reason. But since 2016 the Android world finally has a line of handsets that adhere to that same standard - Google's Pixels.
The search giant's mobile strategy has recently been emulating parts of what's made Apple very successful, and this has culminated with the Pixel 2 XL. It's a phone that primarily doesn't get in your way, doesn't frustrate you, and doesn't make you go through hoops to accomplish tasks.
Let's talk about the camera - not the shooter itself, but the app's interface, which is labeled as 'barebones' by those looking for pro settings. These people aren't wrong, but the thing is that the Pixel 2 XL produces some of, if not the best photos of any smartphone out there today. And it does all that without requiring you to think before you shoot - you don't have to set up a snap, you don't have to carefully choose which settings to use before you capture, thus frustratingly missing some shots entirely. You just literally point and shoot.
The simplicity of that proposition is often overlooked by people who love an abundance of choice, but the problem with too much choice is that it can end up crippling you. Less is sometimes better than more, and Apple's always known this even if they are quite guilty of underdelivering in the field of customizability.
Google now seems to be on the same path, of letting 'the magic' happen in the background without any direct user input required. The camera's ease of use combined with the quality of its output is a good metaphor for the entire experience of using a Pixel.
You can pick one up and start using it as your daily driver in a matter of minutes, and you will not encounter any fear of having missed out on some features that are buried three menus down.
The Snapdragon 835 enables an even smoother experience than the 821 could for the Pixels from 2016. It's not a huge difference but the Pixel 2 XL definitely seems faster in normal day-to-day tasks than the model it replaced - it's like a more mature version of that.
Overall, the phone is a pretty complete package: you get the best set of cameras on any device (or, depending on your use case, among the top three), stereo front-facing speakers, a bigger screen with smaller bezels than its predecessor's, ample storage space, a modern look, great battery life, fast charging, as well as water and dust resistance. But what a Pixel brings you most of all is consistency in the experience of using it day in and day out.
This is a phone you will reboot only once a month, after installing a new software release, and one that won't feel like it's gotten slower within a few weeks. Other companies have devices they claim will feel as fresh down the line as they were out of the box, but Google's already been delivering on this front for a year now.
Of course, we have to mention the update situation, still bad for most Android handsets, still glorious if you go the Pixel route. And with the second generation, Google's even promised a minimum of three years of feature updates, so buying a Pixel 2 XL means you will receive Android R when it's released in 2020. Couple that with the monthly security updates and your peace of mind should increase exponentially, if always being up to date is high on your list of priorities.
On the other hand, the Pixel 2 XL is not a cheap phone. And for the amount of cash it requires, you may find that the few compromises it does pack are too much to swallow. It all comes down to what you value above all else: if you really can't live without the headphone jack, if you are very concerned about having the absolute best display there is, if you don't want to play the Bluetooth accessory connection lottery, if you hate putting a case on your phone and can't live with accidental touches due to the curve of the screen... then you'll probably be best served by one of the Pixel 2 XL's many competitors.
When you purchase a smartphone, which is now the one bit of technology you interact with the most throughout the day, you always pay for how aligned that specific device is with what's most important to you. If you value a clean user experience without a gazillion options and settings getting in your way, if you value consistency and dependability, if you like your handset to be extremely capable but not in-your-face about that, if you want to simply point and shoot great looking pictures... then the Pixel 2 XL is a solid choice.
Of course you may like iOS better for much the same reasons, or be more used to it, in which case you might not want to jump ship to Android. But if you are considering that, there probably isn't a better device to switch to than the Pixel 2 XL.