The Google Pixel 5 is one of the most anticipated smartphones of 2020 and one of the most controversial devices this year. A device that should bring us closer to that very Google Experience. A smartphone that is on its own. A lot of good things, a lot of controversial things to tell about this smartphone, so let’s get started.
Design, materials and impressions
Google devices have always had some kind of conventional magic for me personally. The reason, most likely, lies in its inaccessibility in our area and in the stories of those who put the hashtag #timepixel under their photos on Instagram. Only OnePlus has such a friendly community.
Why am I all this? My first acquaintance with the Pixel 5 was quite reverent and when I opened the box, I was surprised – it is very compact. If you were looking for a convenient smartphone for one-handed use, this is it.
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In addition to the compactness, I was surprised by the materials. Plastic. What? Plastic is a flagship smartphone? Well, this cannot be! This is, as it were, and not quite so. The chassis of the smartphone is made of aluminum, on top of which a composite resin was poured.
In addition to the aesthetic reasons for this decision, there is also a logical explanation, but more about it later. And now I take a flagship smartphone in my hands – and it is made of plastic. Pixel 5 is very similar to your brother, which does not try to be pretentious and pretentious, it is rather homey and warm. Somehow you can convey the feeling of using it. But if you had time to think that my whole review would be positive, then this is far from the case.
Elements on the body
On the bottom of the case, there are connectors: USB-C and one of the speakers, and the second is hidden under the display. All the controls are on the right side and they make you suffer. Even after two weeks of use, I can’t come to terms with the fact that the power button is above the volume rocker, and consistently several times a day I try to unlock and lock the smartphone by pressing the volume up. Perhaps it will pass, or it may not.
The sim card slot allows you to use only one physical sim card, but no one prohibits the use of eSIM. And no memory card trays – you don’t need them.
Well, on the back there is a fingerprint scanner. Google claims that it returned it to this place at the request of fans, they say it is more convenient for them. Of course, I don’t want to argue with anyone, but such people were outraged by the loss of a floppy drive, for example. It works quickly and relatively accurately, but there is no face unlock here. Indeed, in the four there was a special fancy scanner for this, and apparently, their conscience does not allow them to do the usual unlocking with a front-facing camera.
Well, in addition to all this, the smartphone has dust and moisture protection according to the ip68 standard, which is undoubtedly nice. In general terms of exterior and usability – 10 out of 10.
Pixel 5 display
We pass to the display. It’s very good too, on paper … 6 inches, OLED, 2340/1080 resolution, and adaptive refresh rate from 60 to 95 hertz. Here you might get “why not 120?” In fact, the difference between 60 and 90 can be seen very well, but between 90 and 120 is no longer so strong, so there is no point in scolding not for the top-end hertsovka.
With color rendition, things are as follows. In total, the smartphone has three display modes, including 2 near-profile and one adaptive. In natural mode, the colors are nearly identical to the sRGB color profile. The gamma is relatively good, and the temperature is literally slightly chilly. In general, I recommend using the natural mode, as everything will be relatively fine.
The maximum brightness with automatic adjustment is 635 cd / m², with manual adjustment – 485 cd / m². Well, as is the case with the vast majority of smartphones with organic displays, a PWM is used to adjust the backlight. Its frequency ranges from 188 to 367 hertz.
What’s the bottom line? At brightness higher than 50%, there will be no effect on the eyes, since most people are sensitive to 220-240 hertz flicker. Well, as befits serious companies, there is no DC dimming in the settings.
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What? Flagship with Snapdragon 765 ??
Now let’s get down to the most controversial point of our review of this smartphone – performance. First, I will list the facts and then move on to my reasoning on this topic. So, the Qualcomm Snapdragon 765G processor is the flagship chip of the 700 lines of processors. 3 clusters, 8 cores, including one with a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz, one simpler with a frequency of 2.2 gigahertz, and 6 energy-saving cores with a frequency of 1.8 gigahertz. Graphics accelerator Adreno 620, RAM 8 gigabytes, built-in 128.
All this combination in theory and in most cases does everything to make the user’s life easier. There are not even any fleeting freezes of lags and other things, which in fact is the merit not only of the processor but also of the software. But there was a “but” here.
First, there is Micron’s LPDDR4X RAM. Secondly, the built-in memory is 128 gigabytes UFS 2.1. without choosing the more memory option. I don’t want to sound like a prude, but this is not the level of a smartphone that calls itself a flagship and compares itself to top-end devices from other manufacturers.
And the third is the processor. Google has clearly decided to cut it since other smartphones on the same chipset give much higher scores in absolutely all synthetic tests. And I would understand if it was aimed at combating heat, for example. There may have been a fight, but they fought badly. A 30% decrease in performance without trying to return to the starting point is a so-so result for a smartphone with a 765. Here’s an example of trolling VIVO X50 Pro on the same chipset.
And for the most part, all this is my digging, since the games are played well at medium-high settings, the system is responsive and smooth, and in general, everything is fine.
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And now I will tell you a little secret: soon we will all have to switch to the 700th line. This year, absolutely everyone was slightly bewildered by the prices of smartphones with flagship chipsets. After that, smartphones with price tags of $ 700,800 began to appear in the popular lines of OPPO, VIVO, and others, and at the same time, the future will be with 700 processors.
That next year the upper price segment will be divided into a super flagship with a conditional 875 and a simple flagship with a conditional 775, 740, etc. The reason for this is the expensive production, in particular, due to the 5G module.
So from using the 865, the new Pixel did not lose much in terms of performance, but it did lose something more – the image processor, and as you can imagine, they are quite different. And we can say a hundred times that the beauty of cameras is a pixel not in hardware, but in software, but this is not entirely true.
Are the cameras still top?
Pixels have always been famous for their cameras, along with them the trend for all kinds of night modes began and with an emphasis on software, not on camera modules, they managed to annually take the title of one of the best cameras on the market. As time goes on, competitors are getting stronger and it’s 2020, and Google continues to use the Sony IMX363.
12.2 megapixels, 1.4-micrometer pixel size, and 1.7 aperture. And this all worked before in conjunction with 800 lines of processors. Now the smartphone takes pictures really well, but the rest take pictures no worse, and sometimes even better.
The second camera has also undergone changes. Instead of the previous generation 2x zoom, it uses 16 megapixels ultra-wide with a viewing angle of 107 degrees and an aperture of 2.2.
It’s not bad, although I would have preferred a telephoto because the much-vaunted Hi-Res Zoom is good only in words. As soon as the light is slightly less than a bright sunny day, the photos start to make noise, and the detail is poor.
Front camera 8 megapixels with 2.0 aperture. In good lighting, it makes pretty good pictures, but again, as soon as the light is not direct and diffuse, the trouble begins.
With the video part of the smartphone, it became possible to shoot 4-ki 60 frames per second, there is both optical and cool proprietary electronic stabilization, but the small matrix makes itself felt – the video lacks detail. In general, the video hasn’t changed much. In general, experienced “pixel growers” say that the camera is better in the top three and four, especially in matters of proprietary HDR.
Small and self-contained
Autonomy. The point that has never been the forte of the Good Company smartphones. For the first time I took a smartphone in my hands, and having felt its weight and dimensions, I decided that the story with a 4-pixel battery is repeating itself and there is not even 3000 mAh. But how wrong I was – 4800 mAh.
This is far from the most record battery capacity, but the battery life is remarkable: 7-8 hours of the screen or 16 hours in the PСMark test. This is a very good result for a device of this size. The kit includes an 18-watt charger, and a full charge of the smartphone lasts two whole hours. It’s time for google to do something about it.
Also, the pixel supports wireless charging and even reversible charging. And then you can reasonably ask the question “how is this, the aluminum case, on top of it there is also plastic and wireless charging.” The answer is very simple – just below the fingerprint scanner in the metal chassis, there is a hole where the coil was placed. It is for this reason that we got this bio-resin fill.
Pure Android 11 is cool. But not always!
Of course, when talking about a smartphone, it is worth mentioning the operating system. Android 11 is immediately installed in this smartphone and for the next 3 years, it will be the very first to receive new versions. I won’t go into details, but I liked a few features.
For example, when I swipe in the curtain, in the upper right corner, instead of the battery percentage, I see up to how much the battery charge will last. I also really liked the trick when it immediately displays on the locked screen what song is playing next to you. And in the comments, you can write where exactly all our data is sent and how everyone is following us.
As I said, earlier everything works smoothly and quickly, but it was not without jambs. In general, it seems to me that the pixel is simply pursued by all sorts of different bugs, which are already some kind of business card or something. For example, if I locked my smartphone with some active application, and then unlock it, then in 90 percent of cases it turns on in horizontal mode as if the gyroscope was somehow wrong to work out the position.
Google Pixel 5 – failure of the year or the best Android smartphone?
And here I sit and think: so what is more in the new Pixel 5: good or bad. On the one hand, it is an incredibly comfortable and enjoyable smartphone. He has a cool display, the coolest software, and a good battery, but at the same time the cut 765, last year’s memory, outdated cameras, and a bunch of small bugs slightly spoil the experience. And I can’t give him an “excellent” mark, rather “commendable”.
- Display6.00-inch: (1080×2340)
ProcessorQualcomm Snapdragon: 765G
Front Camera: 8MP
Rear Camera1: 2.2MP + 16MP
RAM: 8GB
Storage: 128GB
Battery Capacity: 4080mAh
OSAndroid 11
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