iPhone XS vs Pixel 3 - Some Initial Impressions And Photo Tests

So the other day Project Fi had the Pixel 3 for half off. I could no longer resist my urge to own all the phones, and I ordered a white 64GB in the small size. My personal phone is an iPhone XS, also the non-giant model. I plan to use the Pixel for my work phone and the iPhone for personal stuff in order to keep my data a little bit segregated and prevent my personal camera roll from filling up with pictures of cars I'm buying and selling. 

Here's a quick and dirty comparison based on a couple days of use. 

Physically the two phones are pretty similar, almost identical in overall size, the iPhone sports a slightly larger screen with significantly smaller bezels. The Pixel is noticeably lighter. On the software side, Android and iOS are on their way to convergence IMO. Not literally of course, but Android keeps getting more and more like iOS and iOS keeps getting more and more features that used to be Android exclusives. I have no problem using either operating system and the Pixel's new gesture based nav is super easy to get used to, coming from a gesture based iPhone, though I do keep opening the app drawer when I'm trying to go to the home screen. 

Overall, I'm impressed with the Pixel and if I weren't already so locked into the Apple Ecosystem with my iMac and iPad Pro, it would be kinda tempting to switch, seeing how I could have bought both me and Daisy new Pixels for less than the price of one iPhone. Android still has it's jank though, I can't get Assistant to work when connected to an Android Auto headunit, and scrolling on websites is sometimes kinda laggy where it's perfectly smooth on an iPhone. 

For less than 1/2 the cost of the iPhone, I could probably overlook that though. 

The cameras are both good. I can take ten pictures with both and be about 50/50 on which picture I prefer the most. Here are some examples:

See what I mean? I'm not a huge pixel peeper, so to me it really depends on the shot as to what picture I end up liking better, I would say for certain they're both very good. There is one thing where the Pixel totally blows the iPhone out of the water, and that's it's Night Sight feature. You can take a photo in near zero light and still get something that's at least usable. The images are noisy, but still, what you would otherwise get, you wouldn't be able to see anything at all. Here's a regular photo from the iPhone and an identical photo taken at the same time with the Pixel 3 using Night Sight. 

Like I said, it's pretty noise, but shit you can actually see things. The way the iPhone photo looks is the way the garage looked to my eyes, you basically couldn't see anything. That Night Sight stuff is magic.