GOOGLE PIXEL 4
The Pixel’s camera rules, but is the fourth time a charm for the rest of this phone? From £669, store.google.com
Google’s new flagship phone is another camera king… but what about the rest of it?
It’s always exciting to see what Google does with its flagship phones. From the days of the groundbreaking Nexus line to the power of recent Pixel models, there’s always something new, something exciting, and something that pushes the boundaries, but does the Pixel 4 do enough? As with previous Pixel phones, the camera is the focus, and it has a typically clean and fast version of the latest Android OS on board. Yes, it has its little exclusives such as offline transcription, and a price below that which Google was asking for the Pixel 3 at launch, but again: is it enough?
In terms of design and aesthetics, the Pixel 4 doesn’t quite hit the high notes of the Samsung Galaxy S10 or the Apple iPhone 11 Pro – not with that chunky top bezel on the front and that blocky camera lens array found on the back. It almost looks like a prototype; something lacking a certain finesse. That said, it’s not an ugly phone, especially if you opt for the white or coral colours as a contrast to the back; these have a matte finish, whereas the black Pixel 4 sports a glossy backing. The sides are textured, giving it a comfortable
feel in the hand, but there’s no doubt Google’s competitors are outdoing it in the design stakes right now.
The display, a 5.7-inch, 19:9 OLED running at 1080x2280, is perfectly fine, and doesn’t struggle with colour, contrast, brightness, sharpness or anything else. In short, it’s a quality panel. It runs at a maximum refresh rate of 90Hz too, which means super-smooth scrolling and gaming – though it’s not always that swift, adapting during the day to extend battery life.
We’re glad that the notch now seems to have been consigned to Pixel history, though we do truly miss the two-tone backing from previous phones in the series – the Pixel 4 looks a bit nondescript without it. Add to that the rather daft-looking camera array on the back, and we can’t call this a design winner.
Image conscious
But what of that camera? Google’s total mastery of image processing algorithms has, even when its Pixel line sported only a single lens, meant excellent photographic results. The Pixel 4, with its added telephoto lens, continues that legacy: there are few better phone cameras out there, though it’s a shame you don’t get an ultra-wide angle lens. In all kinds of scenarios, the Pixel 4 camera impresses, snapping shots with rich colour and excellent detail. The Night Sight mode returns, doing wonders with limited light, and this year it’s even able to have a go at some astrophotography – provided you can keep the phone perfectly still for four minutes while pointed at the night sky so it can capture enough detail.
Its telephoto lens really helps when zooming in; combined with the Pixel 4’s Super Res Zoom digital processing, you can get close to the action from afar. Apple and Huawei are nipping at its heels, but Google’s poise in the photography game can’t be faulted – though the important benefit of the Pixel range so far, the unlimited Google Photos uploads at the original quality, ends with the Pixel 4.
Battery life is less impressive: the 2,800mAh battery just about makes it through a day with average-to-heavy use, so you may need to top it up during the evening if you have a big night out planned. It’s certainly not catastrophic, though. An hour spent watching Netflix pulled capacity from 100% to 89% at full brightness and volume at half the maximum, which is a reasonably respectable score.
Face it
Unusually, neither the Pixel 4 or its big brother, the 4 XL (from £829), come with a fingerprint sensor. Instead, Google is aping Apple’s approach of relying on face recognition for biometrics, but you can use a backup PIN code. This works very well – by the time you have lifted up your phone to your face, you’re in. You need never see the lock screen again, if you don’t want to.
One issue with this is that apps which often use your fingerprint for security, such as banking apps, will force you to manually type in your password until these apps get updated to accept face unlock – and that’s by no means a guarantee.
The face scanner is one reason the top bezel is so large; the other is Motion Sense, which utilises a tiny radar packed into the phone to enable you to skip songs, silence tracks and more all with a wave of your hand. We’ve seen this before in various guises from other manufacturers, and while Google’s implementation works pretty well, it has a lot in common with Samsung and LG’s stabs at the tech: it’s far from perfect, and we can’t really imagine using it very much.
What we can imagine using is the Recorder app, exclusive to the Pixel 4, which transcribes spoken audio in real-time as you record – perfect for interviews, meetings and lectures. You can search through your notes with ease, and even run searches for ‘applause’ or ‘music’. If you’ve ever used YouTube’s automatic closed captions, you’ll know Google’s algorithm can make a stab at recognising those, too. The Recorder app works offline if needed, as Google has managed to embed some machine-learning AI trickery onto the device itself.
Speaking of AI, Google Assistant gets better yet again and should now be able to respond to queries much more quickly and with less reliance on the cloud.
The rest of the specs of the Pixel 4 are rather average, or at least average in the context of a 2019 flagship Android phone. It comes with either 64GB or 128GB of storage and there’s no memory card slot. The Note 10+, by contrast, maxes out at 512GB, with a memory card slot. There’s 6GB of RAM (the OnePlus 7T Pro can carry as much as 12GB), and a Snapdragon 855 CPU, which has already been bettered by the Snapdragon 855+. Specs aren’t everything, of course – Apple’s
iPhones famously get by on less RAM thanks to software optimisations going on behind the scenes, but they are something. In just about every category you can find a phone that’s beaten the Pixel 4 this year, which isn’t a good look for a flagship that’s launching after every other brand has had their go.
In sink
The Pixel 4 is fully dust- and waterproof, with an IP68 rating that means it can survive for up to 30 minutes in water at a depth of up to 1.5 metres. Wireless charging and fast charging are here again, same as last year, and you can use the same Pixel Stand that launched alongside the Pixel 3 to turn your phone into a nightstand display.
Bad news for 3.5mm stalwarts, because you’ve got USB-C or Bluetooth for audio: the headphone jack is gone for good, though the Pixel 4 does also offer a good-quality pair of stereo speakers. They’re fine for gaming, podcasts and movies and, at a push, they’ll do for music as well.
So, let’s now loop quickly back to the beginning of our review and ask again: is all of this enough? The likes of Samsung, Apple and OnePlus have made substantial steps forward with their handsets this year. Let’s be fair: Google has also made progress with the Pixel 4 in terms of the camera, Motion Sense, Face Unlock and integrated AI. But there are some disappointing misses among the hits.
When it comes to the hardware design, the internal components and the battery life, the Pixel 4 is not much more than satisfactory. If Google wants what has thus far been Android’s cornerstone design to continue to appeal to power users it needs to go further than a maximum of 128GB of internal storage with no memory card support, for example. Perhaps the excellent Pixel 3a and 3a XL proved that high-end pixels have had their day, and that the mid-range is where the Pixels belong?
Or maybe not. The improvements just aren’t big enough in comparison to the rest of the field – it feels as though Google has lost some ground this year – but this is still absolutely the best Pixel handset yet. It takes the stellar photos that the range has become known for, and the on board AI (including Google Assistant) remains the gold standard that everyone else needs to beat. Whether that is enough for you to pick this over something else will be an entirely personal thing. The price, we feel, is right, and the laundry list of reasons you’d have bought a Pixel in the past remain ticked off here.
There’s magic in the Pixel 4, but most of it comes from Google’s software division using it as a launch platform for some cool new Android functionality – if you need that now, then you need a Pixel 4. If you’re looking for raw power in your hand, its souped-up rivals may offer more of what you’re looking for.