GOOGLE PIXEL 4
This year’s Pixel handsets have certainly come with some tweaks on Google’s flagship formula, but are they all for the better?
It’s almost immediately apparent that the design of both the Pixel 4 and 4 XL has shifted considerably away from that of their predecessors, with the two-tone rear entirely replaced by matte-glass surrounded by a textured aluminium bumper. While this is still a classy look, when combined with the new square camera bump, it feels like Google is taking a big step towards the homogeneity of other premium flagships such as the latest iPhones. The aforementioned bumper does make for a nice surface to grip onto when in use, and the matte glass feels pleasant to the touch, but these will likely both be buried in a case soon after you get the phone.
Flipping it over, you’ll notice the first point of difference (of only two) between the regular handset and its larger counterpart. While the Pixel 4 has a 5.7-inch display at a 1,080 x 2,280 resolution, the 4 XL bumps this up to 6.3-inches and 1,440 x 3,040 pixels. Overall, this makes for a greater pixel density (537 versus 444ppi) on the XL and, theoretically, a sharper image, but in reality both P-OLED displays are perfectly capable of producing clear, vivid images and video. The upgrade to a 90Hz refresh rate for both handsets (which you can disable if you’d prefer to save a touch on battery life) is somewhat noticeable in standard practice, making for a smoother scrolling experience in social media for instance, but really shines when gaming.
PROJECT SOLI
These screens are surrounded by thin bottom and side bezels and an oddly prominent top bezel. The reason for this extra chunk (and distinct lack of notch) is to house Google’s Soli motion-sensing and facial recognition technology, which both rely on radar – one of the new Pixel range’s flagship features. Project
Soli has been in development for at least five years now, being publicly announced in 2015, and has essentially culminated in the ability to swipe your hand over your phone to skip forward or back when playing music, or silence your alarm or phone call. Frankly, this is rather underwhelming and we found the song-skipping to often activate when we didn’t want it to, and the alarm silencing seemed a tad janky, although the phone’s awareness of your proximity does mean that the ‘alwayson’ display is only on when you’re actually nearby enough to see it, which is neat. To be fair, there is room for these gestures to be added to in the future, with more app integration (scrolling web pages, perhaps?), and for improvements to be made to tighten its response. The technology itself is apparently capable of detecting ultrafine movements, even with thumb-forefinger gestures, so we’re hoping this feature will expand its usefulness.
The other reason for Soli’s integration into the Pixel 4 lineup is for its Apple-esque facial recognition. Instead of the camera-based biometric security found in most competing phones (outside of the recent iPhones), these Pixels use radar to map and recognise your face, providing security that Google deems thorough enough to do away with a fingerprint scanner entirely. In practice, we did find the face unlocking to be snappy, and combined with the phone’s ability to detect when your hand is approaching it in order to prep the radar and wake the screen, it makes for a rather fluid and organic interaction. With that said, unlocking it while it was laying flat on a desk or tabletop meant awkwardly hovering your face over it like some kind of blimp or resorting to entering your PIN code.
Also housed in the large top bezel is the selfie camera — a single snapper as
“It feels like Google is taking a big step towards the homogeneity of other premium flagships such as the latest iPhones. ”
opposed to the Pixel 3’s dual array, which also included a wide-angle lens. The depth effect in portrait selfies is now digitally produced rather than optically and the field of view is reduced from 97° to 90°, but honestly, these changes aren’t all that noticeable in practice as Google’s software is topnotch. Any downgrade in the selfie department is more than made up for in the primary snapper, which now utilises a dual camera setup to boost the already-stellar Pixel photo and video game to the next level. A second 16MP telephoto lens joins the existing 12MP main camera to enhance its zoom capabilities, low-light performance, and depth-offield effects in portrait photography, and we found all three of these areas to be highlights of the fourthgeneration Pixels.
Some further improvements in the software side include the ability to preview your HDR+ photos live (rather than having to see the results after the shot’s been taken), an astrophotography mode for shots of the starry night sky, and a Dual Exposure mode. This latter feature lets you modify the brightness of the background and shadows of your subject with independent sliders in order to better balance photos with blown-out backdrops or indistinct subjects. These extra abilities come courtesy of the processing power allowed for by the dedicated AI chip (Neural Core) which is also responsible for the new live captioning feature that annotates any audio source live, and will also power a much-improved Assistant (unavailable at the time of testing, but due sometime in the Summer).
PURE ANDROID
As always, you’ll be getting the most stock Android experience available with the new Pixels, both arriving with the latest Android 10 in its sleekest form. The interface is intuitive, simple, and snappy — something iOS users will enjoy if they switch over — and the phone’s integration with Assistant and any Google smart home tech you’ve got set up is equally as immediate to use. Powering these handsets is 6GB of RAM and a Snapdragon 855, which isn’t the latest mobile processor from Qualcomm but is still plenty powerful enough for almost any current smartphone task.
As for the second point of difference between the two handset variants, the regular Pixel 4 only has a 2,800mAh battery (a downgrade from the Pixel 3’s 2,915mAh) while the larger 4 XL has 3,700mAh. As expected, the regular Pixel 4 doesn’t have such a great battery life as a result of this, barely lasting until evening with average use, while the 4 XL will comfortably last the full day and change.
VERDICT
We would’ve liked to have seen certain additions (5G network support and improved battery life, namely) and some of the new features are currently in the ‘gimmick’ phase — Motion Sense will likely join the existing Edge Sense (or ‘phone squeezing’) as an unused method of interaction. Both handsets have landed at a lower retail price than last year’s models by $150 and $70 for the Pixel 4 and 4 XL respectively, and while we have some misgivings about them both, they still represent excellent value compared to some other premium flagships, particularly if you’re keen on camera and AI prowess.