Pixel 3 & 3 XL, 3a XL chat

[editor]

In come the video reviews

 

[editor]

Here's the official page. The 3 starts from $799 and the XL from $899 so way out of my price bracket.

This is good

Pixel 3 comes with an 18 Watt fast charger in the box, which can give you seven hours of use in 15 minutes of charging. With our AI-powered Adaptive Battery technique, Pixel 3 prioritizes battery power for your most important apps to make your phone last all day.

Alongside Pixel 3, we’re also introducing Pixel Stand, our new, Qi compliant wireless charger (sold separately). While charging in the Pixel Stand, your phone turns into a smart visual and audio experience powered by the Google Assistant, similar to Google Home Hub. It answers your questions, plays music, helps you control smart home devices, transitions into a photo frame when idle, and much more. If you set an alarm, your screen will gently brighten over 15 minutes before your alarm goes off, mimicking the sunrise and helping you wake up naturally. Pixel 3 also comes with dual front-firing speakers tuned by a GRAMMY®-winning music producer to turn your phone into a powerful speaker. Customers who activate a Pixel 3 or Pixel 3 XL by December 31, 2018 can get six months of free YouTube Music Premium.

Google Pixel 3: Make every day more extraordinary

 

[editor]

The camera was already class-leading and there's some useful stuff in here

• Capture smiles, not blinks: A feature we call Top Shot uses AI to help you capture the perfect photo every time. When you take a motion photo, it captures alternate shots in HDR+, then recommends the best one—even if it’s not exactly when you hit the shutter—looking for those where everyone is smiling, with eyes open, and facing the camera.
  
  
• Get better zoom: When you zoom in on a phone camera, the image looks grainy. Super Res Zoom is a computational photography technique, traditionally used for astronomy and scientific imaging, that produces sharp details when you zoom.
  
  
• No light; no problem: Pixel 3 lets you take natural-looking photos in dark surroundings, all without a flash. With Night Sight, coming soon to Pixel 3, you can take bright, detailed, colorful shots around the campfire, in a moonlit forest, or after you close out the bar.
  
  
• No selfie stick required: Get everyone in the picture with Group Selfie, which gives you 184 percent more room in your photo for friends and scenery.
  
  
• Look … no hands! Photobooth mode uses AI to recognize that when you’re smiling or making a funny expression, you’re ready for a selfie. It snaps the photo on its own so you don’t need to reach for the shutter button—a good option for candids.
  
  
• Even more stunning portraits, front and back: When you take photos in Portrait Mode, you can change the blurriness of the background, or change the part of the picture in focus, after the fact. Google Photos can also make the subject of your photo pop by leaving them in color, while changing the background to black and white.
  
  
• Create and play: In Playground, you can make photos, selfies and videos come to life by adding your favorite superheroes, animated stickers and fun captions. In celebration of Marvel Studios’ 10 Year Anniversary, you’ll enjoy seeing the characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (exclusively on Pixel) react to each other and to you. New packs for Weather, Pets, Sports and Signs let you have everyday fun, and coming later this year, you'll be able to sharpen your dance skills with moves from Childish Gambino.
  
  
• Super smooth video: When you want to capture something that won’t stop moving—think an adorable toddler or your new puppy—Motion Auto Focus will make sure your Pixel 3 camera stays in sharp focus automatically, as you record. And if you happen to be taking a selfie video while walking or moving around, Pixel 3 brings you front-facing video stabilization.
  

 

[cybershot]

"Almost a grand" is still better than "one and a half grand"

The trick is. Don’t release a 512GB model and then you can’t charge that much as it doesn’t exist.

 

[cybershot]

No headphone jack!

And that notch!

The pixel stand is $75!!!

 

[editor]

No headphone jack!

And that notch!

The pixel stand is $75!!!

As I said right from the start - the notch is crap and the lack of a headphone socket sucks on any phone. Being Android, there'll be no end of super cheap alternatives to the Pixel stand, not that I'll be buying one.

 

[cybershot]

As I said right from the start - the notch is crap and the lack of a headphone socket sucks on any phone. Being Android, there'll be no end of super cheap alternatives to the Pixel stand, not that I'll be buying one.

To be fair, it’s pretty cool. But an accessory that basically is a google home dock for your phone should cost as much as the google home mini (£50) if not less. In my opinion.

 

[editor]

To be fair, it’s pretty cool. But an accessory that basically is a google home dock for your phone should cost as much as the google home mini (£50) if not less. In my opinion.

Well, you're getting Google Home *and* a wireless charging dock. And I'd be surprised if you won't be able to pick it up for less than £70 after a while.

 

[cybershot]

To put things into context with the price. And no doubt the specs are probably better on the pixel 3, you certainly get a better camera but The iPhone xr at 64gb storage As apples base competitor. Costs less.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

They’re definitely putting a lot of effort into promoting the camera - eg partnering with Annie Leibovitz and

At the launch, Google said it had given the phone to publisher Condé Nast, and its photographers had used it shoot the covers of seven of its magazines. Those include pictures of Ryan Gosling for GQ and Cardi B for W. The magazines will be on newsstands soon.

I mean sure this doesn’t actually say anything about the camera apart from “google really wants to promote it” but maybe, in a world where there are increasingly few obvious differences between phones in terms of hardware, cameras (and their software) are one of the few distinguishing factors.

 

[editor]

They’re definitely putting a lot of effort into promoting the camera - eg partnering with Annie Leibovitz and


I mean sure this doesn’t actually say anything about the camera apart from “google really wants to promote it” but maybe, in a world where there are increasingly few obvious differences between phones in terms of hardware, cameras (and their software) are one of the few distinguishing factors.

With favourable lighting and a talented photographer, I'd say it's been possible to create magazine quality on all sorts of phones for years on end.

That said, the camera in the last Pixel was one of the very best, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixel 3 has the best mobile camera EVAH!

 

[MBV]

*watches Pixel 2 prices*

 

[FridgeMagnet]

With favourable lighting and a talented photographer, I'd say it's been possible to create magazine quality on all sorts of phones for years on end.

That said, the camera in the last Pixel was one of the very best, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Pixel 3 has the best mobile camera EVAH!

Yeah, a basic phone camera certainly has the basic power to do a magazine cover, plus all these magazine shoots (and I'm pretty sure I've heard of it being done before) will have full studio lighting, auxiliary lenses and a lot of photoshop too - and people who know how to play to the phone's strengths.

It's an interesting marketing move though, with both Google and Apple trying really hard to promote the cameras on their phones. There used to be a "premium compact" market of high-spec but easy-to-use cameras basically for rich (or aspirational) people. Now that phones have taken over the market that compacts previously had, maybe it's a similar group being chased.

 

[editor]

Ohm the charger is rather clever:

All that's great, but for me the magic is in how the Pixel 3 is able to recognize not just the Pixel Stand itself, but tell the difference between specific units.

Having Assistant remind you about your schedule is nice at home, but maybe you'd prefer not to have all that info popping up when powering the phone on a generic Qi charger in a public space. Or maybe you'd love Photos to display pics of your family when charging with the Pixel Stand on your bedside table, but not when docked on the Stand you keep in your office. How can the Pixel 3 tell these use cases apart?

Google has cooked up its own solution, embedding a special data stream within the wireless charging signal. It's not NFC or Bluetooth — the Pixel Stand wirelessly communicates with the Pixel 3 through the charging emissions themselves. And that enables users to pair their phone with particular chargers, specifying rules for what content should be available in the process.

It's just a small feature — which is why you probably haven't heard about it even if you were watching today's launch event — but one that adds just enough extra polish to help elevate the Pixel Stand above third-party wireless charging stands.

 

[editor]

Here's the promo

 

[mwgdrwg]

Absolutely fucking hideous.

 

[paolo]

John Gruber, Daring Fireball:

“I watched the Made by Google keynote video, and was in New York yesterday for some hands-on time with their new products. Nicole Nguyen’s summary of the Pixel 3 is the best I’ve seen — really does capture just about everything you should know about it. She’s got a video of the new Call Screening feature in action — man oh man, do I want that feature on iOS.”

 

[editor]

Turns out that charging thing is pretty good - Google Pixel Stand review: The best accessory Google has ever made

The camera is chuffing great - Google Pixel 3 and 3 XL review: the best camera gets a better phone

And the display even better - DisplayMate gives Pixel 3 XL highest-ever grade of A+, excels in every test

 

[mauvais]

It's an interesting marketing move though, with both Google and Apple trying really hard to promote the cameras on their phones. There used to be a "premium compact" market of high-spec but easy-to-use cameras basically for rich (or aspirational) people. Now that phones have taken over the market that compacts previously had, maybe it's a similar group being chased.

Simpler than that, it's the only remaining hardware function that's still got any meaningful development left in it, and thus the only straightforward product differentiator, or 'thing to sell'.

There's a little more going on in the world of device-bundled software but to a fair extent, and a growing one, you can just wait for that and it'll eventually arrive on older hardware. By the time that really stops happening and you feel like you're missing out on things, the device is probably worn out.

 

[editor]

Here's how some of the camera magic works:



Google AI Blog: See Better and Further with Super Res Zoom on the Pixel 3

Here's some whooping

 

[editor]

Interesting piece -

THE PIXEL COMPETES WITH THE IPHONE FOR MIND SHARE, NOT MARKET SHARE
Apple can no longer claim to have the best camera on a phone. Google gets to say that. If my illustrated love poems to the Pixel camera haven’t been enough to convince you, check out what The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have had to say about the first two Pixel generations. This year, Google is investing substantially in amplifying the message about its camera lead. It has recruited famous photographer Annie Leibovitz — previously a vocal endorser of the iPhone’s camera — to do a photo tour of the United States with a Pixel in hand, and it’s paid Condé Nast to shoot seven different magazines’ covers with the Pixel, featuring such high-profile stars as Ryan Gosling. Google isn’t trying to make money out of its phone business as much as it’s working to pad out its reputation as a tech leader.

Even without selling tens of millions of phones every quarter, Google has an influence on the smartphone market purely by virtue of those phones’ existence. Apple will never be content with being second best, and the latest iPhone camera system — undeniably Apple’s best to date — bears a striking resemblance to the computational photography approach pioneered by Google. You don’t have to believe that Apple copied Google to see how much less impressive the iPhone XS is to anyone who’s seen the results produced by the Pixel’s camera. And the number of people aware of the Pixel is far larger and growing much more rapidly than the number of people who own one.

Why Google’s Pixel phones matter

 

[MBV]

Tempted editor ?

 

[editor]

Tempted editor ?

Out of my price range, sadly.

 

[editor]

Shot on a Pixel 3 apparently. Could probably do the same with a load of current high end phones.

 

[paolo]

John Gruber, who does the Daring Fireball blog, was a very big thumbs up on the computational photography.

He went to the launch, and in his last podcast was gushing about the top photo feature.

Gruber normally covers Apple stuff.

 

[editor]

OK, now here's something that is going to tempt me seeing as I do a LOT of low light photography

Google's 'Night Sight' Mode Is Downright Amazing « Android :: Gadget Hacks

Go to 1 min



More: Google Pixel's new Night Sight mode in Google Camera app is incredible

 

[editor]

if a review could purr, this one would

Google Pixel 3 XL review: big is still beautiful

 

[paolo]

Awesome. Even my f1.4 SLR lens couldn’t do that.

With the Pixel 3, Google are killing it on computational photography. Which is where it’s all going now.

The other phone companies have been leapfrogged, and the traditional camera companies are looking like relics - in terms of this new way of processing.

 

[editor]

Awesome. Even my f1.4 SLR lens couldn’t do that.

With the Pixel 3, Google are killing it on computational photography. Which is where it’s all going now.

The other phone companies have been leapfrogged, and the traditional camera companies are looking like relics - in terms of this new way of processing.

Yep. Could you imagine this tech inside a proper dSLR?

 

[mauvais]

Awesome. Even my f1.4 SLR lens couldn’t do that.

With the Pixel 3, Google are killing it on computational photography. Which is where it’s all going now.

The other phone companies have been leapfrogged, and the traditional camera companies are looking like relics - in terms of this new way of processing.

I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself there. Computational photography has its place but it's no substitute for the same thing done right without it, at least where feasible. You can usually build up a better version of the truth by taking in more data and averaging it, but you can have all the data you like and if it's bad data you get a bad average and a bad result. Better to have good data from a single capture. Plus once you start taking in data beyond a single exposure you open yourself up to all kinds of artefacts and errors; most panoramas I've taken with a phone have something wrong with them, and no it's not technique.