The Pixel XL is an amazing achievement for the first Google branded phone but is it good enough to give the iPhone 7 Plus problems? I switched, as an experiment, from the iPhone 7 Plus to the Pixel XL. This is my take after more than a month, expanding on -- and wrapping up -- earlier takes. Note that I did not -- and will not -- ditch my iPhone 7 Plus. And note that reportedly holiday sales of the Pixel were strong, with Pixel devices accounting for 12.3 percent of phone activations with Verizon, according to Bloomberg.

Google has made a strong phone debut, according to the first round of reviews. Strong enough to take on the market-leading iPhone. The 5-inch Pixel and 5.5-inch Pixel XL are the company's first pure Google-branded smartphones, with the tagline "made by Google." To date, Google has released phones under the Nexus brand, which tended to emphasize the phone's manufacturer, such as LG and Huawei, not Google. Wall Street Journal: "The Google Pixel is now the best Android smartphone you can buy," the Journal said in its review.

After recently purchasing the artificial intelligence start-up Viv, it looks like Viv's AI could replace Samsung's S Voice in the alleged Galaxy S8, according to the latest leak. The California based Viv was co-founded by Dag Kittlaus, who helped create Apple's Siri. Viv's mission is to create an even better AI assistant than Siri, and its recent purchase by Samsung helped give this goal momentum. Many tech companies are putting effort into stepping up their AI game, as was seen in Google's October press event. It makes sense for a hardware company like Samsung to invest in AI, and this most recent rumor gives us an idea of how Samsung intends to use its new resource.