As with most phones fresh out of their boxes, the Pixel 2 XL has excellent battery life. It easily makes it through a typical day of web browsing, social media lurking, photo-taking, Google Maps, emailing, phone calls, and YouTube videos.
It charges quickly, too, with the included USB-C charger. Google boasts seven hours of battery life for actual real world usage, like "a mixed use of talk, standby, web browsing and other features, with always on display off," from just 15 minutes of charging.
The combination of great battery life and fast charging meant that I rarely felt the need to charge the Pixel 2 XL overnight. I could simply give it a quick burst of charging here and there over the course of a day and feel confident that I always had enough battery life.
One feature that Google hasn't yet added to its Pixel 2 smartphones is wireless charging. It might seem like a missed opportunity, especially when Apple introduced wireless charging to its latest crop of iPhones. At the same time, wireless charging isn't a feature I'm dying for. As I mentioned above, the combination of fast charging and the Pixel 2 XL's great battery life already gives me all day battery life without much worry.
The Pixel 2 XL has a slightly larger 3,520mAh battery than the Galaxy Note 8's 3,300mAh battery, but I didn't notice much difference in battery life between the two.