 Nexus is dead. Long live Pixel. [♪ music playing, clicking sound effect, music playing, and music playing again. TunnelBear is the simple VPN app that makes it easy to browse privately and enjoy a more open internet. To try TunnelBear for free, check the link in the video description. Yes, it is true. The long line of Google Nexus phones has ended. Its successor will be Pixel, which is currently my favorite phone. Yeah, we'll dive into the details of that later. The Pixel is a phone made by Google, yet still manufactured by someone else, HTC in this case. But they weren't Google's first choice. That would have been Huawei, who bailed out because Google wouldn't put their logo on the phone. Which brings us to the design. Easily the most talked about and polarizing aspect of the Pixel visually is the Gorilla Glass pane on the back of the phone. But it turns out that it's not just for looks. It is intended to help with cell reception along with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth signals, which is cool. And if you really hate it, you can just put a scan or a case over it. Anyways, tea brand. Also on the back of the phone is a fingerprint reader, which you can also use to pull down or put away your notification tray with some finger flicks. And maybe it's because the last phone I reviewed was the LG G2, but I absolutely love having it in this position. No, it's not ideal for when it's on a table. But when you pull it out of your pocket, you can unlock it in one smooth motion while having your hand in the perfect position, ready to use it. So good. Absolutely love that. What some people are saying isn't so good is the thickness. A Pixel XL is 0.33 inches thick, while an iPhone 7 Plus is only 0.29 inches thick. But to be honest, guys, I really can't bring myself to care, especially when the Pixel XL is also rocking a 3450 milliamp hour battery. Whoa, seriously, the battery mixed with the new software stuff, which we'll talk more about later, gives me the ability to just charge whenever I want. Instead of having to constantly be chasing down power sources. It's awesome. In the time that I've been using it, there have been a number of occasions where it has lasted two days with no additional charging. So good. What's arguably even more awesome than that is the camera, which happens to be the highest rated smartphone camera ever. Its specs are darn impressive. 12.3 megapixels, f2.0 aperture and a 1.55 micron pixel size, along with 4K video recording and 240 FPS slow-mo. Naturally, I gave our resident camera expert Brandon Lee a spin with it. And while he wasn't able to appear on camera because he's off being a cinematographic wizard somewhere, he did leave me with some notes. Lens flare is an issue, as others have noted in their reviews. However, thanks to our natural habitat being the cloudy rainforest of southwestern British Columbia, he actually never encountered it. He described the low light performance as not groundbreaking per se, but said that it was very good for a smartphone. But then he was a little bit disappointed with the lens blur. Apparently, iPhone's implementation is notably better as the pixel would blur out odd parts of an image and add grainy effects to some other images. The HDR Plus mode is impressively fast, but a little overdone at times, which can make images look less natural, though that's great if that's what you're looking for. And if you're looking for more true-to-life images, you can still get those rather easily after a few tweaks in a photo editor like VSO. His conclusions were that the pixel gives detail that he never thought one could get out of a smartphone photo. And in his subjective opinion, he sees this as the best no-edit smartphone on the market. Blam. That's awesome. Moving on, we have the hardware. For both the Pixel and Pixel XL, you're looking at a Snapdragon 821, an Adreno 530 GPU, 4 gigs of RAM, and either 32 or 128 gigs of UFS 2.0 storage. With the Pixel specifically, you'll get a 5-inch 1080p screen with, for its size, a large 2770 mAh battery. The Pixel XL steps it up a notch with a 5.5-inch 1440p screen and that massive battery that I mentioned earlier. All those impressive specs, however, might cower in fear a little bit when they hear that both versions have an IP water and dust resistance rating of 53, meaning it's somewhat splash and dust resistant and that's it. Which leaves a bit to be desired as it's quite behind the curve compared to other modern phones. Even Apple is finally rating their phones at IP68. That's lame, Google. What isn't lame, however, is the software. Pixel is running Android 7.1 and oh my gosh, is it smooth on this hardware. Easily the most buttery experience I have ever had on a phone. The UI just glides at your fingertips. Nothing takes time. Everything is effortless. Even when playing games, the phone doesn't even notably heat up at all because that might dare take away from the experience. It's glorious. Which makes the total flub of a speaker implementation that much more disappointing, especially from the likes of HTC who have ample experience with how to do this right. There are no front facing speakers to go on those giant bezels where they would fit right in. Just an unfortunately easy to cover up eh sounding speaker near the USB type C port. Sad. But anyways, the swipe up motion for the application tray is a little odd at first, but grows on you quick, especially if you've installed a similar aftermarket launcher of your own in the past. It works nicely with the whole smooth idea of the Pixel, and so does the long press option that I expect many people to overlook. You can now hold your finger on an app and it will flip up some additional shortcut options like incognito tab in Chrome, or the take a video option in the camera app. Pretty neat. Then we have the Google Assistant. What time is it? The time is 1141 AM. Which is a more conversational version of Google Now, which means it will remember the previous questions that you've asked and will be able to provide context appropriate answers to follow up questions without you rephrasing the entire thing. On the surface, the Pixels are very good smartphones, but not necessarily perfect ones or even great ones for that matter. It has a crappy speaker, non-expandable storage, bad water resistance, large bezels, and it's kind of thick. All of that going along with its surprisingly high price tag. But when you use it, it's not much short of amazing. It's the smoothest phone I have ever witnessed. The best camera in Brandon's opinion, which is good enough for me, along with incredible battery life. It's truly more than the sum of its parts, and I am super stoked for Pixel 2, where they can fix the speaker and water resistance problems along with the other things. dbrand is your source for awesome vinyl skins. They're available for phones, tablets, laptops, consoles, controllers, and even more. They use high quality, authentic, true textured 3M vinyl on every product, and they feature unrivaled precision. They measure many times to ensure that they have a factory fit for your product, so it'll fit on nice and look like it actually was supposed to come that way. Their configurator is great, and it allows you to view and pick out exactly what you want for your product. Not only does your phone look great, it protects against damage and scratches as well. And they even ship worldwide. You can check them out in the link in the video description. Alright guys, that was my first phone review in a long time. So if you liked it, like it, and let me know what you thought in the comments down below. I'm reading them because I hope to do more of these in the future. I want to review the Pixel 2 when that comes out. If you hated it, dislike the video and leave a comment explaining why as well, so I can get better at the things that I do. If you want to buy something like this, check it out in the Amazon link in the description down below, where you will also see our shirts in a link like slightly around that somewhere. I don't know. If you want to check out Linus's OnePlus review, check that out up here. And I'll see you guys next time.