I've had my Pixel XL for about 18 hours now
Initial impressions:
The phone is obviously well made but not breathtaking that's for sure. The top and bottom bezels don't bother me that much but the side bezels seem huge. Really glad that I got the black because I think it would be even more annoying with the white front. The phone is a attractive but nothing about it is sexy. It seems like the design is a year or two behind cutting edge manufacturing but it is made very well.
Quite Black isn't very black. I wish that the glass was black but instead it's charcoal. Again though, I think it's the best bet because of massive side bezels. But it's weird that when the OLED screen is showing black is significantly darker than the bezel.
Assistant is awesome, I love the news podcasts. I'm extremely impressed and it's obvious that this is going to get even better very soon.
Camera is amazing, the speed is just incredible and pictures are great.
Bluetooth is a huge improvement over Nexus phones. I have bitched a lot about how frustrating Bluetooth was with the N6 and N6P with many of my devices. Super fucking flakey! This is rock solid and so far as reliable as the iPhones and Galaxies that I've owned. Huge improvement on a crucial feature for me!
I got insane battery life yesterday. I was installing all my apps, setting up my phone, testing features, etc... so it got heavy use and it barely used any battery. Obviously, I need to test this more.
The reception is very good. My other phones often lose reception in my apartment but this maintains solid reception with half to three quarters of the reception bar full.
32GB is way too small, I've already filled 37GB. The setup dongle is a great idea and works very well and very quickly. My stuff was all transferred in 10 minutes.
The circular icons are half baked. Most of them are the old icon in a white circle. They bring even more inconsistency to the interface because only the Google apps are really circular and honestly all together it looks like shit, worse than how the icons looked before. I like how you can see more into folders now though.
The speaker is a major step back. Don't get me wrong, it's good for a single speaker but shit compared to the 6 and 6P. I need to have it at max volume all the time whereas the other phones I could keep lower and boost when I really needed to. It's not nearly as good an experience for conference calls and watching videos. When watching videos it's really easy to cover the speaker and muffle the sound. For me, this is easily the phone's biggest flaw. Fortunately, Bluetooth seems much improved but front facing stereo speakers should be standard on phones that cost this much money.
Overall the phone is excellent and nails most of the basics. I'm very happy and consider it overall to be the best phone on the market despite room for improvement.
