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Sound quality from these speakers is excellent, easily up there with the iPhone XS Max and Razer Phone. Sound is bit bassier and fuller than the iPhone XS and it’s loud enough to hear Google Assistant queries from across the room. Whether or not having great sound warrants the large notch will depend on your preferences, but i’ll take it. There’s no headphone jack here on either of the Pixel 3 phones this year, but Google does include both a 3.5mm headphone jack adaptor and a pair of actually very decent USB-C earbuds in the box. These earphones are a lot like the wireless Pixel Buds from last year and they boast some of the same translation functionality and Google Assistant tricks. They also have the same looping design whereby the cable wraps around the buds and offers some extra support for the ear. Sound from these USB-C headphones is better than other pack-in options, with decent bass and volume.

There’s Bluetooth 5 support too, if you’re more a fan of wireless headphones, and connection was rock-solid during the review process. Fingerprint authentication remains the single biometric feature on the Pixel 3 XL and I do miss unlocking the phone with my face. It had become natural to open the iPhone XS by looking at it, and going back is kind of a pain.

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Google Pixel 3 XL – Software The Google Pixel 3 XL runs the latest version of Android 9 Pie with the exclusive Pixel launcher on top. This launcher adds in bits like the swipe-up app tray, gesture buttons and the adaptive time/weather widget. The UI is clean, simple and fast to navigate. There’s only the essential Google apps pre-installed and absolutely nothing else. As a user of Google services, the way everything works and syncs together is nothing short of fantastic. Google’s version of Android is the best version for me and I always forgot how great the experience is when I am using something with a heavy skin.

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However, I do think a bit more work needs to be done to address the awkwardness of the notch. I’m not talking about having an option to hide the notch with a faux border (you can do this, but it’s hidden away in the developer options), but the way icons and apps interact with. Far too often the status bar icons get stuck behind the notch, meaning you can’t see what’s happening. It just looks weird and unfinished.

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You can even see the tip of the notch intruding on the notification panel We’ve covered the biggest Android 9 Pie features in a separate piece, so I won’t go deep into them here. However a couple do deserve a mention. I’m a big fan of the Digital Wellbeing features; being able to set timers on social-media apps and limit how much time I spend scrolling through Instagram is a great addition. I also really like how you can set the screen to black and white after, say, 11pm.

The gesture navigation controls are here in full force and it seems like, currently, you can’t go back to the old ‘menu, home and overview’ layout. Instead you’ve got a pill-shaped home button that bring up your apps with a swipe and a ‘back’ button that only appears when it’s needed. I do like this gesture-based navigation, but it’s nowhere near as intuitive as the iPhone XS. Too many times I found myself needing two distinct swipes to reach my apps and it’s a pain to quickly jump back to previously used apps. The idea is great, but the way it works needs some tweaking.

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