NYC trip with the Pixel 2 XL

This week is the first long trip I’ve taken with the the Pixel 2 XL (after the short trip to Santa Cruz in February. Previously I’d always relied on my iPhone while traveling, since it always took better pictures than whatever Samsung phone I was using at the time. But time with the Pixel camera convinced me it was just as good as the iPhone camera, so this time I opted to bring the Pixel (it admittedly helped that I was traveling to a Google conference at a Google office).

The Pixel performed great on the trip. As usual I got some great shots (the picture shows the view from the 14th floor of Google’s NYC office). Battery life was awesome; I don’t think I ever used more then 33% of my battery on any day, even when not spending time at Google NYC ((I still regularly get 4 days at home, although that’s helped by the amount of time I spend with Wifi access). Project Fi coverage was fast and comprehensive. I discovered a new feature in Chrome on the trip: it automatically saved the page with my boarding pass for offline access, so that I didn’t have to worry about it being bumped out of the cache or spotty network access at airport security.

And of course it was invaluable having access to the usual suite of Google apps. What would I do if I couldn’t quickly check what the various cafes were serving in order to choose where to have breakfast?

So overall the Pixel performed spotlessly on the trip, and I’ll likely be bringing it as the default on future trips (particularly for International travel; the international data access on Project Fi is another big benefit).