18 ANDROID ADVISOR • ISSUE 46
REVIEW
a film on them. I found even podcasts sounded a bit
tinny and trebly and preferred to use headphones.
This involves the included adaptor, and music
streamed from Spotify sounded good through AKG
in-ear headphones. With no headphones in the box
though, audio quality will depend how good your cans
are. Call quality on the Pixel 2 is very good, with all
2G calls sounding crisp and clear (the earpiece also
goes excruciatingly loud, which is better than quiet).
VoLTE and Wi-Fi calls are available depending on your
service and operator, and all worked in my testing.Software
The lure of the Pixel 2 is not its pedestrian design
but its superb software. As described it takes care
of photos to an unbelievable level, such is Google
prowess in post processing and machine learning.
Google Photos is so far ahead of the competition
it’s not even fair anymore.
The Pixel launcher is slightly tweaked now,
putting the Google search bar at the foot of the screen
rather than a tab at the top. You can’t change remove
it, but you can edit the five icons that site above it,
and a swipe up gets you your full alphabetized list.
Android 8.0 Oreo out the box gives you a
completely up to date Google software experience
and I really can’t fault the performance of the phone
at all. From streaming music, watching video and
gaming, to multitasking between data intensive apps,
the phone didn’t chug once where the iPhone 8 does
in my experience. Google gets all the little things right
too, like swiping on the fingerprint sensor to bring the