Armed with Snapdragon 845 chipset and 4GB RAM, Google Pixel 3 still has few tricks in 2021 to keep you entertained.
- Though this article mentioning about Google Pixel 3 only, but the whole points available inside this article is applicable for both Google Pixel 3 and Google Pixel 3 XL.
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Released originally back in 2018 in 2 forms factor: the standard and XL and in 3 unique colors: Just Black, Clearly White and Not Pink, Google Pixel 3 is now 3 years old in 2021. For fast evolving technology like smartphone, 3-year-old is already considered aged, however after using it quite extensively myself for the past one week, I can tell you that Google Pixel 3 (or Google Pixel 3 XL) is still great to be used in 2021. Find out the detail reasons below.
What Google Pixel 3 is great about as 3-year-old smartphone?
These are what makes Google Pixel 3 still a great phone to get in 2021:
1) Google Pixel 3 has Snapdragon 845 chipset and has 4GB of RAM, which makes it still a very capable smartphone. Reason: There are plenty of new Android smartphone that released in 2021 that use chipsets that are less powerful compared to Google Pixel 3’s Snapdragon 845 and have less amount of RAM. And you know what? When developers (app and game makers) come out with their apps and games, they want as many people as possible to be able to run their apps and play their games, so for sure they (developers) try so hard to ensure their apps and games are optimized and made compatible with the lowest spec possible. See here on details why Android fragmentation is an advantage for Android users at JILAXZONE.
2) Google Pixel 3 has free unlimited Google Photos storage forever. There are 2 types of photo qualities you can choose when uploading your photos and videos to Google Photos, a) first is the original quality, b) second is the storage saver quality (formerly known as high quality). Google Pixel 3 can upload unlimited photos and videos in original quality until Feb 2022 and can upload unlimited photos and videos in storage saver quality (the photo must be at max 15MB or lower) until well, forever – until the Google Pixel 3 is giving up. FYI, every shots taken from Google Pixel 3 camera, while that totally depends on the type of shots taken, but has average size between 3-5MB, so storage saver quality is more than good enough!
3) Google Pixel 3 gets Android 12 OS and will still receives security updates from Google. As of when this article is written, the current latest Android OS is Android 11. Android 12 is still in beta, planned to be released later this year. Google Pixel 3 is getting Android 12, so it’s still another year of official support from Google. Next year, even if Google drops Google Pixel 3 from Android 13, but you shouldn’t be worry so much because there are lots of people in communities like XDA-Dev (Google Pixel 3 & Google Pixel 3 XL) or LineageOS (Google Pixel 3 & Google Pixel 3 XL) which eventually come out with Android 13 for Google Pixel 3, so long live Google Pixel 3!
4) Google Pixel 3 is relatively cheap on the market. The not-so-good thing about Google smartphone is, they are not hugely popular among the crowds, but that’s the good thing, since they are not hugely popular, so you can always find a new / used one with discounted price especially when compared to hugely popular smartphone with the similar specs (E.g.: Samsung Galaxy S9 or Note9 – they have the same chipset as Google Pixel 3). I can get mine second hand for US$115, where as with the same amount of money, you won’t be able to get Samsung Galaxy S9 or Note9.
There are some other great things about Google Pixel 3, but I guess those mentioned above are more than enough as the main selling point and differentiator to convince you why Google Pixel 3 is still a good buy even in 2021.
Here’s my review after using Google Pixel 3 for a week
I have just bought Google Pixel 3 in early June 2021 and at the time this article is written, I have been using it for a week. I bought it second hand for US$115 which considered cheap, especially if compared to other Android smartphone with similar specs to Google Pixel 3 (such as these phones on the list by AndroidAuthority). So far I don’t have any complaints on the phone except I realized I should get one with the bigger capacity. I bought the 64GB model. The phone is still running Android 11, since Android 12 is not release to the public masses yet. During one week of usage, so far the experience is fluid. I didn’t notice any performance slowdown at all.
Things I love (apart from the great things I have shared above):
- Pixel experience out of the box! Of course, this is Google Pixel phone anyway.
- Google Camera app with all the goodies from Google to snap great pictures and videos.
- No bloated apps. For those who are using other Android phones other than Pixel, should know this.
- No duplicate apps. No duplicate assistant, no duplicate dialer and so on and so forth.
- No advertisement shown. For those who are using Xiaomi smartphone, should know this. If you happen to use Xiaomi phone, check it out here: Remove ads from Xiaomi phone at JILAXZONE.
- It has fast charging. Charging from 10% to 100% takes about 1 hour plus only.
Things I hate:
- It doesn’t have memory card slot, though it’s not a super big deal for me, as I have the workaround here: DIY Portable Cloud at JILAXZONE.
- It doesn’t have headphone jack.
- Battery life is kind of suck, but it could be because this whole week I keep pushing the phone to the limit and the fact that I bought this second hand. I need to do some more testing on this before confirming whether it really sucks or not.
The reason I’m buying Google Pixel 3:
I have been looking for quite sometime a replacement for my old Android phone (Chinese brand smartphone running Android 7) and tablet (Nexus 7 2013) and I have a tight budget for it. I’m looking anything below US$100-120. While I was originally aiming to get Android tablet – because they are bigger in screen size so definitely better for anything entertainment and playing games, but in the end I decided to get Android phone instead and got my hands on Google Pixel 3.
- I need a capable device to play Android great heavy games such as Genshin Impact.
- At the same time, I need a capable device to play emulators (such as : Wii, Dreamcast, PlayStation and everything before), because I love retro games and would like to play them from just about anywhere anytime I like to play them.
- I like to explore places be it locally or internationally and love take bunch of photos and videos, so I need a good camera phone.
- I need a way to back those photos and videos, both locally and to the cloud – in case my local storage is busted (which has happened before and lost so many photos and videos) – so having unlimited quota to Google Photos is a totally plus point for me.
- I need a device that continuously getting updates, since these days hackers and stealers are pretty much all over the place. Google Pixel is the perfect choice for this, as for Google Pixel 3, it will still receive latest Android updates for quite sometime.
- More importantly for anything below US$120, there’s not many competitor that can surpass Google Pixel 3. Well, there is one: Xiaomi Pocophone F1, it has the same Snapdragon 945 chipset but bigger RAM size of 6GB. But while it has bigger RAM, it doesn’t have the luxury of getting OS and security updates as fast as Pixel nor it can allow me to store unlimited photos and videos to Google Photos, so considering these 2, I chose Pixel 3 rather than Pocophone F1.
So should you get Google Pixel 3 too?
Well, that totally dependent on your needs and especially your budget. However, in case you have the same / similar budget as mine (US$100-120) and looking for a great Android phone that can do everything I mentioned above, Google Pixel 3 or Google Pixel 3 XL is the answer, so long you can:
- Get at a very good cheap reasonable price
- Get a great battery life if it’s a used device
- Can live without SD card.
In case you have questions related to Google Pixel 3, don’t hesitate to ask them on the comment section down below. I’ll be happy to answer and help!
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