Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Pixel 4 tease: what it means”.
Google what’d, you do. If you didn’t see this week, Google just tweeted out a picture of the Pixel 4 months before it’s going to release it, which is not a thing companies do., And so I think it means three major things and I wan na go through’em.. Okay, so first it shows that they understand how leak culture works, especially in Android, because you know how the leak culture works. I know what the script looks like and companies never admit that they do too., But Google’s now admitting that it knows.. So here’s the script. Act, one is like there’s a render. And then act two is we start to see some cases, so we can guess at the shape of the phone and then act three. Is we start to get some leaks of what the features are? Gon na be – and we start to know more about what we should expect. And then act. Four is like the thing falls off a truck and we see real photos and, in Google’s case, sometimes like full on reviews before they’ve even announced the phone.
And then act five. The big conclusion: the grand finale the executive walks on stage and says this is Pixel. 4 and we’re like yeah dude, we know.
We’ve already seen everything about it and it’s a huge, let down. So Google’s playing with that script. A little bit..
So I think that’s clever.. There is a downside, though, and that’s what does this mean for the Pixel 3, which is now like the saddest, sad panda of Pixel phones, because no one’s gon na go buy this thing, because they’re gon na wait for the Pixel 4, which has been officially revealed By Google itself., It probably means that Pixel 3 sales are even worse than we thought and we didn’t think Pixel 3 sales were that good to begin with., But it also means that, like Google doesn’t care., It doesn’t need to make money on the Pixel 3.. It’S just gon na wait for the Pixel 4., So the other thing about phone leak.
Culture is it’s all about hype and the hype cycle, and it’s about you like imagining this phone. That’S not out yet is going to be great and will be the thing that you want.. It will be your next. And just putting out a photo of it right away means that every time we write about the Pixel 4 on theverge.com we’re gon na use Google’s official photo., It makes the hopes and dreams better. Every time an Android phone gets announced or Released or reviewed between now and then you’re gon na, compare it to this Pixel 4, which is going to be perfect and you’ve. Seen a nice photo of., It’s this empty vessel to pour all of your hopes and dreams, into., I’m pointing at the Pixel 3’cause.
It is not an empty vessel, it is a sad terrible battery life vessel., But the Pixel 4 won’t be it’s gon na be great.. Google knows that everybody thinks that, because they tweeted the photo.. We expect the iPhone 11 to look pretty much exactly like the Pixel 4.. It’S gon na have a big square camera bump on the side and be glossy and black and whatever., And the iPhone always comes out a month before the Pixel, and so when the Pixel would come out, people would be like “.
Oh, you just copied the iPhone.”, But now the Pixel got shown first and so now the iPhone would be like. Oh you, kinda copied the Pixel. And that’s kind of I don’t know funny to me.. The second big thing that this tease means is we get to look at the picture that Google tweeted and try and make some guesses about what the features of the Pixel 4 are gon na be.. The first thing that we can see is, if you look at the back of that photo, it doesn’t have this two tone: glossy versus matte finish: that’s design language that Google has stuck with for three years, which is exciting.. Maybe this phone’ll look and feel a little bit more high end than before..
Second, there’s no fingerprint sensor on the back and that’s important because it means they’re gon na find some other way to. Let you log in biometrically., Maybe it’ll, be a real face. Id on Android, finally. Or maybe it’ll be an in-screen fingerprint sensor.. We don’t know, but we do know that fingerprint sensors on the back are so 2017 and Google’s moving away from it.. Most importantly, we know that there’s a big honkin’ square, camera module and sure it’s gon na look like what the iPhone looks like and we’re gon na have big honkin’ square camera modules on all our phones now forever. Whatever. Inside that big honkin’ square camera module, though, Are two camera sensors and up until now, Google has said they only need one to do lots of cool stuff because they’re better at computational photography.. So if they’re adding a second camera sensor, that means they’re promising, they can do some really cool stuff with it.. Will it be wide angle or telephoto? Will it have better portrait mode? What about those other little dots that are in there Is one of them.
The spectral flicker sensor like on the Pixel 3, Or is it like a time of flight sensor with a laser? What’S the flash gon na be Where’s the other microphone? Will they finally make good video on the Pixel 3? There’S a lot of stuff that we can speculate on, but we know for sure there’s a second camera sensor, and that means that Google’s gon na lean even harder into photography on the Pixel.. Oh, you know: there’s one thing we can’t see in the photo, but I wan na talk about it anyway and it’s this Project Soli rumor.. If you haven’t heard of Project Soli, it comes outta, Google’s, ATAP division and it’s literally a tiny radar chip and it’s designed to let a device detect, tiny little hand, movements out in space. Nine to Five Google heard a rumor that it was gon na, be there.
Xda developers found code in Android Q that verified that, and I actually got to try it four years. Ago., You see me use on a smart watch where I twist my fingers and it like adjusts the smartwatch or a speaker where I could use it for like media controls. And we’re expecting media controls to be the thing that happens on the Pixel.. The last thing that this tease means – I think the most important thing is that Google is raising the stakes on itself.. The Pixel 4 should be a like truly flagship phone.. It should be the kind of phone we’ve been waiting for Google to make and can compete head to head with the iPhone and with Samsung phones and with Huawei phones from a hardware quality perspective.
In addition to a camera and software quality, perspective. Google acquired this HTC team. They call it the Taiwan team., The first phone that they worked on fully was the Pixel 3A, but the Pixel 4 is gon na, be the first flagship phone that they work on and because the Pixel 3A exists, they’ve got a low cost option, which gives them Permission to make the Pixel 4 even higher cost and we’re expecting the Pixel 4 to get sold by all US carriers and probably including AT .