Google Pixel 5 - Review

 

Google pixel 5. you know if you think 

about it it's actually kind of funny 

that 

google makes smartphones just because you know you and me both know google as a software company and an ads company but we really know their specialty is software yet every year we have these huge expectations like they're going to blow our minds with some amazing pixel hardware but they never do they never really do because pixel hardware has never actually been that great they've never had the best screens or the best designs they've never had the biggest sensors or the most ram pixel has never really been about that.

So now it just seems that 2020 

is the year google not just recognizes that but embraces that the pixel is all about the software so they're not even making a thousand dollar crazy high-end flagship hardware phone this year that i'm gonna try the pixel 5 is 6.99 and it's just a vessel for all the best software that google makes and the result is a pretty nice phone it's a pretty nice phone not some mind blowing bleeding edge hard ass phone just a nice phone this metal build losing those hardware bells and whistles from last year i actually think made it better to be honest so no radar system up in the top in the huge bezel for some flashy gestures i'll never use and face unlock instead just a selfie camera cut out all screen up on the front of this phone thin symmetrical bezels like i said it's not a stretch to say this is the best looking front of a pixel ever just by keeping it simple the back material we kept getting told by google that it's metal right and it is but then that metal is underneath a coating of this kind of soft touch textured plastic it seems like it's wearing well.

It doesn't have any staining problems or 

anything like that except the power button is still glossy that's a little different from the rest of the body but yeah the result is this pretty clean and well-built design no seams i've seen some headlines of people getting pixels that weirdly have the back slightly detached like separated from the front glass piece here super odd but clearly mine doesn't have that issue at all it's water resistant which is awesome there's a classic fast reliable fingerprint reader back here that can 

double 

as a notification shade pull down if you're into that and then there's a cut out in the back for wireless charging which is clever but overall pretty understated i would say the phone is small it's a six inch edge to edge display but it's small it's smaller than the iphone 12 smaller than a lot of other flagships and i think a lot of people appreciate that and i don't know what it is about.

This green 

tech all this green stuff coming out but yeah green's not really my color i would probably do the other color which is 

black 

or big brain status you can grab a case from channel sponsor d brand and pick any color you want and they've actually been refining their materials on this grip case which has this new texture along the sides with literally tens of thousands of these tiny little micro dots on the surface to give you more grip so it kind of feels like a tame version of that old one plus sandstone so if you want to get a grip link will be below that like button as always so okay they definitely took a step back from the the premium hardware of previous years even on the inside.                                                                                                                                                    The vibration motor in this phone has taken a step down it's a very standard kind of sloppy feeling regular vibration motor no headphone jack no earpiece speaker too so the stereo image from this speaker pair is a little bit weaker all of which would normally be really disappointing in a sequel to a flagship but i guess you can't really look at.

This phone as a sequel to a flagship 

it's a different price point it's 6.99 so it's actually not really shocking at all the display on the front is par for the course it's a six inch diagonal 1080p 90hz and with a pretty nice colors and a decent max brightness.

It's not you know quite the eye 

searingly bright for outdoor visibility that the flagships are but it's good enough for everything else and i'll go back to the overall aesthetic these bezels are thin all the way around even through the corners and most people including me are just going to really like this display but and it hurts me to say this i can tell the difference between this 90 hertz display and some of the 120 hertz displays in some other phones in this price range now again most people won't and it's kind of fair to point that out but this is my review and you would want to know.

The things that i noticed so this is 

something i'm noticing and if you care about this type of stuff you'd want to know that you can see the difference so now you know phones like the one plus 8t and the galaxy s20 fan edition feel to me noticeably smoother than this phone now this phone is also trying to throttle down from 90 hertz all the time and you might have to force 90 hertz to keep it at 90 hertz but generally if you'd want to know that now you know but most people won't have any problem with this 90hz display also there aren't very many snapdragon 765g phones at 120 hertz so this setup really is more balanced between performance and efficiency and this phone this phone never really felt slow which is good it just never felt quite as fast as 120hz flagship to my calibrated eye and i think that's actually more because of the display than the chip so a lot of people got mad because pixel was going down to a snapdragon 765g which is technically a weaker performer 

on paper 

than the one in the phone that came before it how could they do that but i actually think this was a great idea for the efficiency gains and this is actually a performance difference that i think no one including myself would actually notice so when you combine this chip and eight gigs of ram with google's 

software wizardry 

you get a phone that feels just fine in everyday use and performance and even through gaming and a battery life that's actually mind-blowing i failed to kill.

This phone in a day 

every single day for two weeks now i realize this is quarantine life and i'm not in a 5g area so um this isn't the hardest possible use that this phone will ever see but the fact that i'm ending a lot of days with four hours of screen on time and 50 battery left to me says this battery is pretty much good to last all day for anyone even forcing 90 hertz in the developer settings like i mentioned earlier didn't kill this phone much faster keeping the screen on as often as possible didn't kill this phone in a day.

I'm telling you through gaming and 

watching videos and navigation and multitasking like this has been the most pleasantly surprising battery experience in a phone in a while it just sips power but okay you know how cameras have always been the focus of the pixel line ever since that pixel 2 leapfrogged everything well this camera.

This camera is the maximum proof of 

google's software over everything approach this camera uses the same sensor as that pixel 2. so since then sensors have clearly gotten way bigger and higher resolution and apertures have gotten wider and hardware tech has advanced a lot but google has stuck with their software special of maximizing not that amazing hardware plus they went ahead and added an ultra wide this year which is great.

So yes i'm just going to say pixel 5 

takes in my opinion still the best looking photos of any smartphone they still nail the look because they haven't changed it it's confident it's a contrasts look with great detail and dynamic range definitely my favorite look but the lead the pixel camera used to have over the rest of the crowd has narrowed a lot and honestly other other smartphone cameras can do things just as well sometimes better with better hardware better natural blur from bigger sensors better detail from higher resolution 50 64 100 megapixel sensors so it makes me wonder how much longer google can keep sticking to this formula i know mr mobile in his video on the pixel 5 he compared 

the note 20 ultra versus the pixel 5 at 

night and of course at night you get some interesting observations about how a bigger sensor gathers way more light and can create real depth instead of having to fake it with software.

so really good video i'll link his 

review below but yeah bottom line pixel 5 camera is really really good but i kind of wonder how much longer this setup will have at the top before the hardware work passes it knowing google and their tendency to lean on software maybe they'll stick with it a little too long the software is just still so killer though i love the exposure and contrast adjustment sliders that are still here also there's these little alignment 

tricks for the horizon 

and for it to take perfectly flat top down shots uh there's portrait lighting and portrait light editing inside of google photos which is crazy i've never seen it before but it it works really well and you've got night sight 

night sight selfies night sight 

portrait mode i like that it suggests portrait mode now when it recognizes a person as a subject and the automatic night side switching at nighttime when it detects a dark scene.

it's all basically software magic some 

of it takes a little bit longer to process though since there's no dedicated image processor anymore so it takes a few seconds after snapping an image for the 765g to actually process it free to view it and that doesn't feel as premium when you have to wait for your photo but the weight is clearly worth it and hey all the android 11 features all the pixel features you could possibly want are also here in this phone minus squeeze for assistant but i think that's because of the metal build they got rid of that but google doesn't have to hold back any software experiences to protect their higher end more expensive phones from cutting sales from them because this is their highest end most expensive phone.

So they get everything so the call 

screen feature from last year is still great the recorder app with live transcription and search still super useful the live captioning of any and all audio going through the phone like videos are watching or music lyrics or phone calls and there's also some new stuff like the new wallpaper picker preview in android 11 and making google assistant wait on hold for you which i haven't gotten to work yet but sounds like something google would figure out how to do so the pixel like the nexus that came before it and even the google play edition stuff has has always been some of my favorite android experiences and there's just something about it but this one's no different it's an aesthetic it's a feeling it's a look and the bonus is you get to be right at the front of the line for whatever stuff ends up in the newest versions of android down the road so at the end of the day 

is the pixel 5 

is this a good phone well here's my take. 

yeah pixel 5 is a good phone this is a 

good device i think there's an argument you could make that it should have been like 5.99 instead of 6.99 and i honestly wouldn't be surprised to see it on sale for that on black friday and even after that this year but it's a good phone and also for those who haven't been paying as much attention the pixel 4a 5g is a very similar also good phone for a lot of the same reasons for 4.99 so i'm going to link that below also but for those wondering about me and am i going to make the pixel 5 my new daily driver this is the opposite of a normal caveat you've heard me say before it's not for everyone i you guys already know i like high quality cameras i like great performance i like stock android you would think that the pixel would be 

for me but 

i wish they had made a high-end 

flagship version that goes the extra 

mile with hardware 

and some bells and whistles even knowing it wouldn't sell that much i wish they had made a version with the neural core so that image processing is a little faster 

i wish they'd made a version with the 

snapdragon 865 and 

12 gigs of ram so performance is good 

for longer i wish they'd made a version 

with 120hz display so it feels 

snappy all the time the battery can 

clearly handle it 

i wish they'd made a version that's a 

little bigger it's just 

a lot of little stuff that i'm so used 

to on 

flagships that this phone doesn't have 

that i'm i feel like i'm missing now so 

they decided to make a mid-range phone 

which 

let's be honest was a pretty smart idea 

for them but uh for me 

personally i'm going to be going back to 

a higher end phone 

i think just because that's what i'm 

used to so for those wondering about me 

that's me but if you're ever looking for 

a master class on how to use 

great software to turn a pretty good 

smartphone into a really good smartphone 

you're looking at it the pixel 5 that's 

what pixel has been all about for so 

long it's just them finally embracing it 

and i'm glad to see it so well played 

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