16 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 46
REVIEW
Connectivity
The phone has Bluetooth 5.0, hopefully to overcome
the original Pixel’s less than stellar connectivity.
In my time so far with the Pixel 2 it has kept
decent connections with wearables, speakers and
headphones, so things look to have improved here.
There’s also NFC for Android Pay that works as
expected, while Wi-Fi connections are slick with
dual band 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. Hotspotting to 4G
also worked without a hitch.Performance
I ran speed tests for the Pixel 2 against the larger
Pixel 2 XL, the iPhone 8 and four other Android
flagships that have the same processor as the Pixel
(the Snapdragon 835). The results below represent
what I would have expected: no real-life difference
between the multi-core scores for any of the
phones with an 835. The Pixel 2 only feels faster
and more fluid than every phone on the list (bar,
perhaps the unusually fast OnePlus 5) because of the
stock nature of Android with no skin to process. The
Pixel 2 ran faster than the XL in terms of frame rate
because of its lower resolution screen, while the
iPhone pulls ahead in terms of raw possible speed
thanks to that A11 chip. But realistically, all these
phones are just as fast as each other.Audio
The Pixel 2’s stereo speakers are pretty good for
YouTube videos and the occasional dip into Instagram
stories, but you won’t want to play an album or watch