Apple Fan Boy Switches To Google Pixel 8 Pro - My First Android

What's good, everyone? My name is Jossie Linje, but you can just call me Jossie. And in today's video, I'm really excited to unbox and experience my first ever Android phone, which is the Google Pixel 8 Pro. And as a software engineer, that's a bit weird to say because I think there's about a 50-50 split between Android and iOS users, maybe 60-40 leaning towards, honestly, I have no clue. Depending on what type of developer you are, like if you're a full-stack dev, more of your developer peers will be using Android, and if you're a front-end developer, you'll notice that most people are iOS, because you're typically working more closely with designers. Anyways, let's just get into the unboxing. So this is my first Android phone, like I mentioned, and my first unboxing in a while, so honestly, this is as raw as it gets. I even finally utilized my two-camera setup system. So we have the typical paper packaging, so I'm always down for things being more sustainable, especially we're going to end up throwing these boxes out anyways, right? And then on the back, you can see here that it says Team Pixel. Okay, wow. So what I think is interesting with Pixel, one, this phone already has some dust on it, but it looks so good. Like I used to think that this visor was a bit weird, but it's starting to grow on me, even though it still looks like a belt buckle with a webcam. So one thing I think is interesting between, I guess, the Pixel Pro models and the iPhone Pro models is there's only one size for a Pixel Pro versus iPhone, you have multiple sizes, which I prefer. But nonetheless, this is a really good-looking phone, all right? So this feels so familiar. This feels so familiar to Apple. I will say one thing I like about this packaging more, there's these icons on the cover that tells you what the power button is and the volume buttons, and then how to use your fingerprint to unlock your phone. And of course, USB-C, all right? So that was, I don't want to say, oh, wow, look at all these fingerprints. It's almost like sweat marks, it's a little warm in here. But I don't want to say anti-climatic. And then what else do we have here? So this top compartment, okay, just instructions, does anyone read instructions in 2023? We have the charger. This is like an adapter. All right, let's move that out of the way. So I actually got this phone unlocked, like this just feels so different. I'm going to power it on, nice. Little vibration sensation to let you know it's on. I like that. A little animation, powered by Android, I don't know, I still got to get used to that. I definitely got to get used to that. There's this really cool bouncing animation, and I can feel the vibration, whatever, like ellipse or whatever, bounces on top of this oval shape. I can't even describe it. I can definitely tell this phone attracts a lot of dust and debris. Hey, Google, make a call. Hey, Google, remind me to water my plants every Monday. I actually can use that as a Google reminder, like no cap, I definitely could. Anything else? Identify music around me. That's dope. Having like Shazam built into my phone, super clutch. As I mentioned earlier, everything about this experience with Android is new to me, from the unboxing to setting up my phone with Google Fi. Setting up Google Fi via eSIM is supposed to be really simple. I think the Pixel 8 Pro having dual SIM is a really nice feature, so if you're unsure about keeping the phone, don't want to commit to a cellular plan, you can go the eSIM route. If you want to have a physical SIM card, you can do that too. It took me a minute to realize that I couldn't do the entire eSIM setup on my Pixel Pro 8, so I had to sign up for an account on the Google Fi wireless website, then link the Gmail account to the Google Fi app on my phone, and voila, your boy's got cellular, just like that. I didn't even have to send my first Android text message, I'll never get used to these green bubbles, or the fact that I have to hope my message actually delivered. All right, so today is the first day that I'm going to be using the Google Pixel 8 Pro as my main driver, so we're about to get a workout in. For my workout, I'm really just going to be switching between Spotify, YouTube, Lifetime app, and maybe the Strong app. I actually forgot to download the Lifetime app. One thing I noticed that I do a lot while using this phone, because I'm so used to iOS, is being able to swipe down and search for apps. Instead, I have to, is it swipe up? No, swipe up is the same, that allows me to toggle between my active apps, but I have to click the search bar, that allows me to simultaneously do a Google search and search for apps, which I think is pretty cool. If and when I switch back to my iPhone as my main driver, it'll be weird not being able to do both, because it is really convenient. I just realized that you can access your apps by swiping up, but you swipe from the middle, which now seems so obvious, like I should've tried that. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Alright, so this is the official New York City Google Pixel 8 Pro camera test. We're going to see what kind of footage we can get during golden hour. In terms of the display, I've enjoyed it a lot with adaptive brightness toggle on, so I had no trouble viewing my screen outside. I also had smooth display on, which raises the refresh rate from 60 to 120 hertz based on the content I'm viewing. The Pixel 8 Pro is bright, I haven't noticed much of a difference compared to the 15 Pro, but the colors do look a bit cooler than on the iPhone. I've had no trouble interacting with the display, just getting used to the pixel gestures, which aren't that different from iOS. In terms of normal day to day stuff, I'm using it with one hand, browsing the internet, interacting with some of my favorite apps, I've had a pretty pleasant experience. The battery life is solid, I use the phone pretty frequently throughout the day, started out with about 85% of charge yesterday and woke up this morning with 15%, so that's pretty impressive. One thing I noticed is that the Pixel 8 Pro battery usage screen is much more insightful than the iPhone's, showing me both my screen time, percentage of usage and background time. After doing a few video tests during golden hour, we wanted to shoot a couple of pictures to see how the camera would do in a semi low light environment. The Pixel 8 Pro pictures have cooler tones, I'm not sure if that's because of the display, but it's almost like there's a filter baked into the camera, but it still did a solid job with preserving the highlights and exposing me well. I also noticed that the photos are a bit more sharp than I'm used to, but it did an excellent job of focusing on me. Now in the selfie mode, I don't think it looks the best in low light environments, but the sun was pretty much down and we're in a small park surrounded by buildings. However, I was very impressed with the voice enhancement mode. So I'm testing out the speech enhancement mode right now and also the low light is pretty good. Like right now we're at 14th Street in Union. So we're in the park right now at Union Square Park and there's no like natural sunlight coming in because of the buildings. It's also golden hour and because of the trees. I'm also testing out the speech enhancement mode. So I'm curious to see what this sounds like once I start editing. One of my favorite features of the Pixel 8 Pro and I couldn't wait to get my hands on is the AI eraser. In this photo, the AI recognizes people in the background and provides a widget to remove them. After selecting the widget, it outlines people to remove. After selecting all, it actually did a solid job in the top left corner, but directly right of me, it looks a little weird and smudgy. I do think this picture was a tricky one for the magic eraser to remove people in the background or objects, but I think this feature is really powerful and can only get better with updates. Overall from this small sample size of using the Pixel 8 Pro, it's been a good experience. Getting used to texting and being in an all iPhone group chat remains to be seen, but I think the video and photography quality is good and typical interactions with the app feel more similar to the iPhone than I anticipated. If you like this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and tell me what you think about the Google Pixel 8 Pro. Until next time, stay blessed, peace.