My Impressions of my Google Pixel 2 XL phone after a few weeks of use
I've just updated the phone to Oreo 8.1 and re-rooted it with Magisk. Judging by the battery drain when using Waze without having the phone on charge, it looks like it is using a little more battery power than with Oreo 8.0. But despite that, the battery life is still excellent as can be seen in the attached photos (after day's use that include some phone calls and two car trips with Waze running). I have not even got down to 50% battery yet by the time I go to bed.
The display, battery life, camera (with moving images and AR stickers), slick response, night mode, etc are all excellent. I'm just charging it at night right now.
On the downside, I've had some stability issues. I got hit hard with the reboot issue (on version 8.0) which I figured out after a day was "solved" by setting the mobile wireless to 3G only. But since upgrading last night to 8.1 suddenly this afternoon at about 6pm whilst listening to a podcast, the phone rebooted about 5 or 6 times. I then just shut it off and when I got home, booted it up, and it has been fine. But this is still worrying, and apart from my Nexus 6P that started doing this after a year, when it was upgraded to Oreo, I've never had a phone that did this before. So I'm not sure if it has something to do with Oreo. It has not become a major issue yet though and there is lots else to love about the phone but the most critical things are stability and battery life (for me anyway).
That said the phone is pretty expensive, and if I had to choose again, I would probably have given a lot more serious thought maybe to the OnePlus 5T (going for less than half of the Pixel 2 XL at https://www.gearbest.com/cell-phones/pp_1337554.html?currency=ZAR&vip=2373336&gclid=Cj0KCQiAgs7RBRDoARIsANOo-Hg41aeaUgJHP1gDuebHV3w2zP69WUZkLaWQP-D1lezO4pZrALKYfscaApp5EALw_wcB). Certainly if the Pixel 2 burns me I will consider an alternative next time. Right now I'm still 98% happy with though.
