After a long wait and learning experience with how terrible the sprint tmobile merger is. I ended up activating this phone on google fi, because I really wanted to try it especially after I waited for over a month. I spent 5 days using strictly this phone, I set up text forwarding using tasker on my s21 that way I would know when I got a text that was important.
This is a fantastic device, it works very well. I did some side by side app opening between the s21 and this phone and they are pretty much the same. The size of the device is pretty much perfect and its super light which makes it nice in the pocket. I like the "stock" android software, however I honestly can't stand the pixel launcher. I ended up setting up Nova7 (I am in the nova beta). On my s21 I really like OneUI it just works well and compliments things nicely. I was curious if the mid range soc would be noticeable in any way. Frankly I never noticed a difference in performance between the s21 and the pixel 5.
Had I been coming from an iPhone or any phone besides the s21 I wouldn't have hesitated and ported my number over and switched to google fi and kept this phone. The reason why I say this is because the s21 has dolby atmos built into the device and the adapt sound feature makes this phone an amazing device for music. Because the s21 has dolby atmos built in, it can benefit from apples spatial audio. That also increases the quality of the music when streaming on the s21 (I do still have my AirPods pros). A good 1-1.5 hours of my day is spent in my car commuting, and in my car I have a premium stereo system.
For the first 4 days I was never in my car and was out of town visiting family so I had never plugged my phone into my car to see how it sounded. When I finally plugged the pixel into my car which has android auto, it was utter disappointment and the music quality was just straight bad. I had my s21 with me plugged that in and played the same songs and it was noticeably better in ever single aspect. I did do research and I was well aware that the pixel didn't have dolby atmos support, but I honestly figured it wasn't going to be a deal breaker. We all know that streaming music quality is never as good as lossless directly on a device.
I honestly tossed in the idea of rooting the device and installing viper4android to get dolby atmos on the pixel. Seeing as how magiskhide is dead until another maintainer takes over. There is honestly no point in rooting an android device that needs to have apps pass safety net. I did download an app called wavelet which is an equalizer and it did seem to help. The adapt sound and dolby atmos are killer features that can't be replaced by an equalizer.
It just goes to show how a little thing like atmos support can really make a device experience that much better.
My only other gripe with the pixel 5 would be the horrible speakers on the phone. They are just bad, I know one is under the glass but the bottom firing speaker isn't very good. This was very noticeable right away, and I could definitely live with that because I dont watch to many videos but its noticeable.
Outside of music streaming this is a rock solid device and checks every box in a phone. Unfortunately that is a box that needs to be checked for me when I purchase a phone. I guess I will wait and see what the pixel 6 really brings to the table, other wise I will happily wait for the next s series.
This is a fantastic device, it works very well. I did some side by side app opening between the s21 and this phone and they are pretty much the same. The size of the device is pretty much perfect and its super light which makes it nice in the pocket. I like the "stock" android software, however I honestly can't stand the pixel launcher. I ended up setting up Nova7 (I am in the nova beta). On my s21 I really like OneUI it just works well and compliments things nicely. I was curious if the mid range soc would be noticeable in any way. Frankly I never noticed a difference in performance between the s21 and the pixel 5.
Had I been coming from an iPhone or any phone besides the s21 I wouldn't have hesitated and ported my number over and switched to google fi and kept this phone. The reason why I say this is because the s21 has dolby atmos built into the device and the adapt sound feature makes this phone an amazing device for music. Because the s21 has dolby atmos built in, it can benefit from apples spatial audio. That also increases the quality of the music when streaming on the s21 (I do still have my AirPods pros). A good 1-1.5 hours of my day is spent in my car commuting, and in my car I have a premium stereo system.
For the first 4 days I was never in my car and was out of town visiting family so I had never plugged my phone into my car to see how it sounded. When I finally plugged the pixel into my car which has android auto, it was utter disappointment and the music quality was just straight bad. I had my s21 with me plugged that in and played the same songs and it was noticeably better in ever single aspect. I did do research and I was well aware that the pixel didn't have dolby atmos support, but I honestly figured it wasn't going to be a deal breaker. We all know that streaming music quality is never as good as lossless directly on a device.
I honestly tossed in the idea of rooting the device and installing viper4android to get dolby atmos on the pixel. Seeing as how magiskhide is dead until another maintainer takes over. There is honestly no point in rooting an android device that needs to have apps pass safety net. I did download an app called wavelet which is an equalizer and it did seem to help. The adapt sound and dolby atmos are killer features that can't be replaced by an equalizer.
It just goes to show how a little thing like atmos support can really make a device experience that much better.
My only other gripe with the pixel 5 would be the horrible speakers on the phone. They are just bad, I know one is under the glass but the bottom firing speaker isn't very good. This was very noticeable right away, and I could definitely live with that because I dont watch to many videos but its noticeable.
Outside of music streaming this is a rock solid device and checks every box in a phone. Unfortunately that is a box that needs to be checked for me when I purchase a phone. I guess I will wait and see what the pixel 6 really brings to the table, other wise I will happily wait for the next s series.
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