2 works for me on Google's voice assistant. Setting alarms, getting directions, and voice dialing also work well. Nothing too exciting. Mostly useful when you don't have hands/eyes or don't want to get up and reach your phone. "Clap on/clap off" lights type of thing.

How is Google VA with background noise. I will renew my phone soon and am between the Pixel and the iPhone 7 (but I hate the absence of the headphone jack and don't want an adapter)

Hard to quantify. Some specific scenarios:

- It won't work in a loud bar

- It will almost always work in a car where you're the driver and there's a backseat conversation or the radio is on.

- It's fine with street/sidewalk noise.

- Not-terribly-loud coffee shops, stores, etc. are also usually just fine.

An anecdote: is that recently I was in a noisy restaurant with an open kitchen (think loud steam blasts and fryers and servers yelling out order numbers) and showing an older friend how far voice recognition had come and it successfully got most of our queries first try and if not, every time second try. This is with English language and asking it to play specific songs. We also have something of a strong accent compared to the san-fran types that presumably trained it (northern England)