Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel 4 and 4 XL hands-on: what the leaks didn’t tell you”.
( upbeat music, ), Here’s the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4 XL.. Are you surprised, Of course, you’re not surprised.? These are probably the most leaked phones in the history of phone leaks.. What could possible be surprising here? Well, I played around with them a little bit and I think there might be a couple of things that I’ve learned from using them that you couldn’t actually know just from following all the leaks.. So let’s get into it..
You know the basics they’re Android phones that are made by Google and they come in two sizes. There’S a 5.7 inch screen and 6.3 inch screen., There’s no notch on that screen. But that’s because the bezel up top is extra big so that Google can fit a ton of sensors up there, including face unlock sensors and a literal radar chip.. But let’s start with just how they look.. Every single Pixel phones has looked terrible in leaked photos, but better in person. And that’s true again.
Here. The aluminum rails around the Gorilla Glass are kind of prominent, but in a good way. They’re like the phone equivalent of big chunky, eyeglass frames., The white one and the orange one and the orange one is limited edition by the way have matte glass backs.
But the black one is all glossy. And they’re all IP60 water, resistant. They’ve got that big square camera bump just like the iPhone, but the Pixel only has two cameras on it: a regular and a 2x telephoto. Okay.
So every Pixel phone up to now has been known mainly for its great camera plus clean Google software, but the Pixel 4 wants to be known for a lot of things.. It’S seriously has so many new features and they’ve all leaked so much that it’s easy to forget how much is new here.. Let’S start with Motion Sense, which is the brand name for Soli, which is that radar chip. Google isn’t using it to its full potential.
Yet but it is using it for some pretty cool things., It forms a sort of virtual radar bubble over your phone and it can detect your presence.. So, for example, if you reach for your phone, it turns on and starts looking for your face. Automatically.. If you walk away from your phone, it realizes that you’re gone and it turns off the always on display..
If a call comes in or an alarm goes off as soon as your hand gets near the phone it automatically gets quieter, and then you can just wave to dismiss the call or the alarm., And if music is playing, you can swipe left or right to change. Songs., That’s actually pretty much it so it could all seem. I don’t know kinda gimmicky, I haven’t decided yet., But there is one gimmick that everybody is going to love. You can have a Pokemon wallpaper that you can wave at and the Pokemon will wave back at you. Or you can tickle the Pokemon by waggling your fingers at it just be like tickle tickle, tickle tickle, It’s fun. In addition to the radar, the top bezel also Has those face unlock IR sensors, which were just a little differently on a technical level from Apple’s Face ID system, but it’s basically the same idea..
You set it up in a similar way and then it just works like it really works, and it’s really fast. Did you catch it? It just unlocked.. Here, let’s show you again., I don’t know how secure this new system is, but holy hell. It is fast. Motion. Sense detects when you’re reaching for the phone and then it’s unlocked and back to whatever you’re doing before you can even tap the screen..
It’S so fast that Google had to put a setting in for people who actually wan na see their locked screen, because otherwise you’d never actually get a chance to see it. And hey since we’re actually talking about the screen. Let’S talk about the screen., It’s OLED in both phones and they should be about the same quality as each other. But I don’t know if it’s gon na be a good year or a bad Pixel 2 kind of year for screen quality., But it is gon na.
Be a spec heavy year, because this screen has a 90 hertz refresh rate, which makes all the movement super smooth.. Now Google says that it’s a dynamic refresh rate, so you can ratchet it back down to 60 hertz when you don’t need it. And I got ta say you can definitely see it in person. I love how it looks., Google says that it supports HDR using the UHDA Certification, which okay sure.
The screen can also change its color temperature to match the room. Just like the iPhone.. Now the thing about fancy 90 hertz screen is they can take up a lot of battery and I’m worried about the battery in the small one.. It’S only 2800 milliamps.
That variable refresh rate will help, but we’re gon na have to see. The bigger one is 3700 milliamps, which is better, but it’s not massive.. At the very least.
They both support wireless charging and fast charging. And heck since we’re halfway through. Let’S just round up the specs. They’ve got a Snapdragon 855 processor, six gigs of RAM, which that should be enough, and they come with 64 gigs of storage, which ain’t much and the max you can get is only 128.
There’s also a Titan security chip and one More chip, the new Pixel Neural Core., It handles the photography stuff, but it also handles voice and Google has loaded its entire machine learning model for English onto the phone, no internet, needed.. That means that the Assistant is super fast at doing stuff, like opening apps or even searching inside apps like Twitter or YouTube., And there’s a new voice recording app that transcribes your voice in real time without having to put anything on the internet at all.. Okay, finally made you wait long enough., Let’s talk about the camera. Up until the iPhone 11 Pro the Pixel 3 was still the best camera on the market and the Pixel 4 now is well. Actually, I can’t tell you that yet., We haven’t really used it yet, but there are a few new features to talk.
About., Google is excited to tell you that it can do astrophotography, which sure that seems neat, but I’m more interested in the improve portrait mode, because it can use data from the second camera. And now, in addition to adjusting brightness, you can also adjust the shadows to Get more control over the HDR processing., Plus that Neural Core means that you can see the preview of what HDR looks like right in the view finder. Instead of having to wait for it to process., The main sensor is 12 megapixels and the telephoto is 16., And my big question is: why did Google go with telephoto instead of ultra wide, Especially since it’s only a 2x telephoto.? Well, Google answers is that they’ve got this fancy super zoom tech from last year and it gets even better where it can use data from the second telephoto lens., So they think people get more used out of it than they would out of an ultra wide. Okay.. There’S only one selfie camera this time around, but it does have a 90 degree field of view, so that is pretty wide.. Also last thing: there’s this neat feature where you can take a photo and then jump right to sending it to another app right from the view finder by sliding on the preview bubble.. But here’s an important thing. I don’t know video is gon na, be much better. This year. It still maxes out at 4k 30 and when I asked Google if they changed much about their computational photography models.
Overall, their answers are more about tweaks than they were about leaps.. Look. We’Re gon na have to test the camera as always, and we definitely will. The Pixel 4 will be an all four major carriers in the US and Google promises me they’re, not gon na put too much crap where on’em.
Looking at you AT .