Google Pixel 3 Review

The Pixel 3 is the phone on which Google's computational photography stopped being a trick. Night Sight arrived by update in November 2018 and turned a single 12.2-megapixel Sony IMX363 into a camera that produced usable, colour-accurate photos in near darkness, and within a year every serious maker had shipped a copy.

Super Res Zoom made the missing telephoto tolerable, Top Shot pulled a better frame out of a burst, and a second wide front camera fitted more people into a selfie. Call Screen let Assistant answer spam calls for you. The Snapdragon 845 was the standard flagship chip, the 5.5-inch 1080p OLED was flat and well calibrated, the glass back allowed wireless charging on the Pixel Stand, and the phone was finally IP68.

The compromises were real. 4GB of RAM at $799, when rivals shipped 6 or 8, meant Android 9's memory manager killed background apps so aggressively that music would stop when you opened the camera; a later update improved it without curing it. The 2915mAh battery managed a day and not a second more. The larger XL carried a notch deep enough to become a meme. From 2021 a noticeable number of Pixel 3 and 3 XL units died suddenly into Qualcomm's EDL recovery mode, out of warranty and beyond repair. Google shipped three OS updates, to Android 12, with a final security patch in February 2022.