After many great years with my Nexus 5, finally it was time to upgrade to the Google Pixel 5-Inch Smartphone. This is a pretty major upgrade, and price tag, given I upgraded my entire family from all our various Android phones. The Phone does not disappoint! We’ll give an unbiased review of the phone here at Tarn Aeluin, advertisement and ad words free.

Tarn Aeluin and Mobile Phones

We’ve been using smartphones here at Tarn Aeluin for quite a long time starting back with Blackberry phones in 20001 with green-screens and even a Linux distro on s Sharp device. In the Android camp for 2 generations, this will be our third generation of Android phones. Our current phones are a Nexus 5, Moto X, and a Samsung Active 5. We’ve been served well by them, but they are all getting pretty old and beat up.

We’re definitely a tech-family and need full featured phones with decent memory and processing speed. We text quite a bit, stream videos, play games, and like integration with our other tech, which are both Macbook Pros, PCs, XBOX, Playstation, and Samsung TVs.

Durability and battery life are keys for me. I travel a lot and my phone is a lifeline that I really count on. A recent trip to Europe where my Nexus 5 was failing was a serious problem.

Tarn Aeluin’s Top Smartphone Requirements are:

• Durability, light weight, and good battery life
• Integration with all our technology
• Processing speed and overall memory and storage
• Carrier free for the latest updates, ability to switch carriers
• Good camera and other tech (fingerprint reader, bluetooth, etc)

Initial Setup and Use

If you are already an Android user then setup is just amazingly easy. I took the time to backup all my stuff (photos, contacts, etc.) to Dropbox, but it all wasn’t necessary. We ordered the phones from Google, went over to the AT&T store (our current carrier), they switched over the sim cards, yes we needed the new nano cards, and then after following the wizards we had everything copied over from the original phones to the new phones. Amazing! In the box you’ll get a plug that will copy all your stuff from the old pone to the new one.

Once everything is copied over we got a decent size Android update, but that is part of the benefit of the Pixel – you get the very latest of everything! Amazingly simple compared to replacing a computer. After about 20 minutes the Pixel was completely configured up and I could shut off the old Nexus.

Converting and Data Movement

Very simple is what I can say. In the box is a cable and an adapter that you use to connect the old phone to the new phone. The configuration wizard steps you through the process, allows you to pick what you want to move, and then completes the whole things in about 10 minutes.

Actual use – Pros and Cons

The first thing that is apparent is speed, the bright high resolution display and the thinness of the phone. Really nice so here’s a gallery of that:

Battery life looks to be excellent – guessing 5 days of real life use will be ok unless there are major conference calls and such. The camera is decent although I have not seen a huge advantage over the Nexus 5 camera I had. HDR pictures definitely are faster. The fingerprint scanner works great and I am using that as my lock on the device. Its also nice that Google gives you two charge cables in the box – USB-C – so definitely nice!

Bluetooth data transfer (images) seems kinda slow compared to the Nexus 5 device I had.

I don’t have any real cons right now. The fingerprint lock will take some getting used to, but I didn’t have a lock code on my Nexus 5 at all.

Final Thoughts on the Google Pixel Smartphone

Its still new and fun times, but so far so good with the new Pixel. The real test is battery life and durability. I did order the protective case from Google so that should help. So far battery life looks great and the device’s performance is excellent. Combining that with the latest Android goodies and I’m really happy with the choice.