ISSUE 44 • ANDROID ADVISOR 27REVIEWexposure is well managed: note that the street lights
don’t have huge flaring in this shot.
The portrait mode is excellent, skilfully blurring the
background after you take the photo. It doesn’t always
do a perfect job, but the effect is convincing enough.
Photos aren’t over-processed: they look nice and
sharp with natural colours.
Video is a little soft at 1080p, but stabilisation is
excellent just as it was on the original Pixel. You’ll get
the most detail and sharpest picture at 4K, but you
lose the ability to record at 60fps.
Audio is a mixed bag. Voices are clearly recorded,
but Google seems to apply noise reduction which
muffles background sounds. It’s fairly effective for
avoiding wind noise, though. It isn’t stereo recording,
which is a shame.
For slo-mo you have the same options as before:
120fps at 1080p and 240fps at 720p.
Software
Out of the box, the Pixel 2 XL runs Android 8.0 Oreo.
It’s one of the reasons to buy Google’s phone: you
get the software as Google intended it to look and
work. And you’ll be among the first to get Android
P when that’s released in 2018. Security updates are
guaranteed for three years – it seems that you’re
expected to keep the phone until the end of 2020
at which point it’s time to upgrade.
Google’s tag line for the new Pixels is “Radically
helpful”. This isn’t just referring to the Assistant
though. Google plays to its strengths and has added
features such as Lens (in beta and exclusive to the