 My first impressions of the Pixel 3 XL were excellent. The above average haptics really make it stand out among other Android devices. Then things immediately took a turn for the worse when I missed a handful of critical Google Hangouts messages. A fresh format without using the transfer cable did get that resolved. And so I spent my last couple of weeks mostly enjoying my time with Google's latest and greatest flagship. That is until today when I ran into a new deal breaker software bug, which is not being able to log into my Gmail account no matter how many times I enter the password and the authentication code. So I guess we'll just get the review done so I can switch back to my other phone. Whether you're migrating 500 computers to Windows 10, managing remote devices or repairing a single PC, Smart Deploy has flexible deployment options. So head over to smartdeploy.com slash Linus for a special offer. The most obvious change to Google's stock Android experience is the on-screen navigation buttons. And they're kind of the worst of both worlds. Unlike Apple's gestures, they take up valuable screen real estate along the bottom of the phone. And unlike other Android software buttons, they are not reconfigurable with the back button stuck way over on the left out of sheer pigheadedness as far as I can tell. They have their strengths. As long as you don't need to go too far back into your recents, the slide is super fast and intuitive. And if you don't like that feature, you can slide up once for a more traditional recents and some suggested apps. It's really cool that this works from anywhere now, not just the home screen. But there's room for improvement here too. As it is, it requires a second swipe to reach the app tray. How about just one really hard swipe and then it could carry through with momentum. I would like that a lot. The other big change that bothered me more than I expected is the inability to execute Google Assistant functions that used to work while the phone was locked, like bringing up your shopping list or reminders. Things you can only do now if you have Google's special Pixel Stand wireless charger. I get that there are privacy concerns around voice print authentication, especially for people like me. But this limitation negated a lot of the usefulness of squeezing to bring up the Google Assistant. I mean, if I have to shift my grip on the phone to touch the rear fingerprint sensor anyway, then why wouldn't I just do that in the first place? I used the squeeze a fair bit on the Pixel 2 XL. And then on this one, I basically just use it as a flashlight toggle. And here come the rest of my gripes about Google Assistant. I ran into this bizarre bug a handful of times with it not registering my internet connection when I clearly had one. Google continues to advertise natural interaction with the Assistant as a selling point when my experience is still that you basically have to read the correct syntax manual to get anything useful done. It still somehow doesn't convert my to you when it creates tasks and the handling of reminder notifications is fucking awful. If you have more than one set up, your phone just buzzes and the card doesn't move to the top or break out the most recent one or do anything useful to draw your attention. And it's pretty easy to have more than one when you're a complete scatterbrain like me. And sometimes I'll even have recurring ones like taking out the garbage, cluttering up the list. Now it's mostly fine as a voice dictation program. My issue here is the branding. If I had a real life Assistant and they were this inconsistent, they would be fired. It is not a time saver. If I have to issue the command twice and then look at my screen to double check that my reminder actually says something coherent. What was it? I guess I'll never know. So I guess it just baffles me that Google is building AI robots to make calls for me and reschedule my appointments when they still can't figure out the basics. I asked my Assistant to remind me to do something tomorrow when I get to work. And it set a reminder for 8 a.m. the next day, well before I even arrive at work without prompting me if I wanna make any changes. Now that behavior has been fixed. That was right at the beginning when I got it, but it still doesn't work the way I'd expect. It asks me what time then when I say, when I get to work, ya dunce, it navigates me there. Who would want that? So you've probably noticed by this point that I haven't talked much about the hardware. That's for good reason. Aside from the Pixel 3 being very compact for a 2018 flagship, neither it, nor its XL sized cousin really tries to differentiate based on the hardware. There are a couple of standout features like IP68 water resistance, 100% DCI-P3 color space coverage and stereo front facing speakers, but there's no micro SD slot, no full screen notchless design, no massive battery, no headphone jack, no weird holographic display or stylus that doubles as a remote control or 10 gigs of RAM option or whatever. And that's okay. It just means that the software experience needs to be amazing, not fine, I guess. Why is OnePlus's overall system responsiveness better than Google's own? Why are Google's software engineers busy keeping track of health and wellness screen time crap instead of building core functionality like screen recording? Why now that facial unlocking has been removed, is there no way to unlock this device without either picking it up off my wireless charger or poking a pin code into it like some kind of caveman? And how is it that Google's own apps look ridiculous with like cutoff text with their gargantuan notch? And that's even ignoring the stuff that they seem to be consciously screwing up. Display profiles have stupid names like adaptive, boosted and natural, instead of just listing the white point and color space. And the audio controls are significantly worse than Oreo. So there's this clever little gesture where you can press your volume up and your lock button in order to mute your phone. Neat. But then there's no toggle functionality when you hit it again. Also, whose genius idea, I would genuinely like to talk to this person, was it to change the default volume rocker behavior to media instead of ringtone volume when you're not doing anything. And finally, this is by far my favorite one, they've bungled up one of my favorite features, the ability to quickly adjust any volume slider without stopping what you're doing and opening the settings app like you're on a freaking iPhone. Why? Also, I know I mentioned this already, but we're really getting to the point where it's not funny or endearing anymore that Google by default doesn't allow you to move the back button to the right side. Like this is getting ridiculous. You don't even have another button there anymore. Now, for all I know, this next one is LastPass' problem, not Google's, but LastPass integration has gotten continually worse on Android over the last couple of years, with the most irritating issue for me being that it used to work when you were signing into Google accounts and now it doesn't. Google now has their own service for this. Coincidence? Perhaps, or maybe they're pushing competitors out. Either way, shockingly, Apple finally allows third-party password managers with Face ID. Now, Apple's implementation isn't perfect, but it is so much better. I don't want to use first-party utilities for this kind of functionality. I want something that works on my Android phone, on my iPhone, and on my desktop for that matter. And before we get into good stuff, I'm gonna close this segment out with one petty gripe. I hate that it's an extra click from the notification pull down now to access my settings. I haven't had to have a settings icon on my home screen on Android for a long time, but I guess that's just still more iPhone crap that we get to go back to now. Maybe I'm just a freak, but I don't like desktop clutter. Everything here has a purpose, and I access the settings menu a fair bit. That last thing, though, is more than offset by my first good feature. Actually, this is awesome. The ability to review and delete voicemails without dialing into your voicemail. I hate voicemail. I actually planned to turn mine off at some point, but I just haven't gotten around to it because it's managed through the company and blah, blah, blah. So on my other phones, I always have this stupid notification that can't be dismissed. This is much better. I also absolutely love that I can interact with notifications on the always-on display. That was a great feature on the Droid Turbo and one that I've been missing ever since I got rid of that phone. So a text message comes in, and I can just, boop, mark as read without ever waking the screen. It's absolutely beautiful. Now Google just needs to wake up to the need for mark as read on everything. Only then can I achieve true notification bliss. Also, for lols, I kept Google's Gboard instead of immediately installing SwiftKey like I normally do, and with some fine tuning, it's really good. I had no idea that you can slide across the space bar to reposition the cursor. That is awesome. But as someone who uses voice dictation a fair bit, it was still a relief to go back to SwiftKey. So I usually find that when dictation screws up a word, it usually ends up getting a couple wrong because one mistake can change the meaning of a whole sentence. When you click to fix an error in SwiftKey, you'll end up with suggestions that fix the rest of the sentence as well, and it's really awesome. I also really liked the way that when you switch to landscape mode, the gesture controls stay on the same edge as in portrait mode. This is a lot better than the way that the home swipe up moves on the iPhone to the bottom of the screen, requiring you to shift your hand in order to access it. Making matters worse for the iPhone is that some apps don't auto hide that bar, even while they're playing full screen video, and it's probably not Apple's fault, but the YouTube Creator Studio is one such app, and I use it very regularly, so it was super annoying. And yet another neat little feature. It's small, but this one actually made me really, really happy. When you don't have your auto-rotate on and you go and open up a photo that was taken in landscape mode, it actually prompts you to click a little button and it'll switch to landscape. And this is really nice for people like my wife who don't like auto-rotate, but might want to show me a picture without me absolutely losing my mind over the wasted black space all over the screen, which I guess leads us pretty well into the camera. It's good. In fact, it's great. There are cases where the iPhone XS tools it, but there are other cases where the Pixel 3's camera makes the iPhones look like it was designed by the same folks who calibrated all the TVs at your local Best Buy. I think calling this anything but a toss-up is probably not being fair to the strengths of either one, at least as far as the rear camera is concerned, but when it comes to the front camera, Google has done a fantastic job here and I'm glad that someone is finally tired of the entire industry sandbagging front-facing cameras, even if it does cost us this hideous notch. As for its nearest Android competitor, the Note 9, it is definitely showing its age a little bit already, so maybe we can follow this up with a full roundup once Samsung releases their next generation. For now though, I can say with confidence that as long as you're okay, with the slow initial shutter response time that I got sometimes, look at that, that you will be very happy with the Pixel 3 XL. I was actually blown away by these videos that I got of my kids on Halloween night. Like there's a lot of noise in the image, of course, but remember that this is with horrendous street lamp lighting. This thing's got a great camera. So Pixel 3 then, on the one hand, it's priced like other flagship phones with only really the camera to set it apart, but on the other hand, it has the most overlooked feature, a built-in fidget spinner. Give yourself the gift of listening, and while you're at it, think about giving the gift of Audible to someone on your nice list. Right now for a limited time, you can get three months of Audible for 6.95 a month. That's more than half off the regular price. So go to audible.com slash Linus or text Linus to 500 500. Love that so much. Audible originals are exclusive audio titles created by celebrated storytellers from worlds as diverse as theater, journalism, literature, and more. One title that stands out is Twain's Feast, narrated by Nick Offerman. An eight chapter journey through Mark Twain's life and travels using his favorite foods as our map. 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