Pixel3 First Impressions
When I left Google 6.5 years ago, I decided it was time to ditch Android and try an iPhone instead. I’ve been a massive fan of pretty much all my iPhone and iOS in general since then. Since our phones are our primary cameras now, I tend to upgrade frequently to have the best camera I can.
However, I’m increasingly convinced that machine learning advancements will drive the future of software and also many improvements in phone photography and that Google is much better positioned to deliver in that area than Apple.
So, I recently bought the Pixel3. I was impressed by the demos of the new zoom and Night Sight capabilities and the general capabilities of Google Assistant versus Siri. So I took the plunge.
The camera is incredible — and I don’t even have the new features yet. I’m looking forward to playing with Night Sight when it’s available (hint to Google, don’t announce a feature like that and then have it not be available when the new phone comes out…).
I’ve also really liked the improvement of Google Assistant. In particular, it’s recommendations for things like maps of nearby areas, local traffic, etc. are incredibly useful. I’m also impressed with its ability to learn which apps I use, which notifications I read, etc. and recommend (or just make) changes to settings to optimize the phone for me. It’s a much more intuitive and useful system for handling these details for even a technical power user.
So far, I haven’t found anything that I really miss from iOS — so we’ll call this one a successful switch for now! Next up, I’ll give a few thoughts on my switch of moving from Mac OS to Windows — which has been a bit harder of a transition.
Originally published at jeffkeltner.com on November 8, 2018.
