Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Pixel 4 Impressions: Google and Gaps!”.
Hey what is up guys mkbhd here – and this is finally the pixel 4.. The most leaked phone in history probably is finally revealed and i feel personally attacked. So the title of this video is google and gaps so the pixel 4. We already kind of knew almost everything about it, but now that it’s actually out it’s been on stage and the details have all sort of been filled in it’s kind of what we expected.
It’S a very google phone, android 10 and the google assistant and some new features and all that, but also there’s some head scratching gaps. Some things missing with this phone – let’s get into it, so the design similar to other pixels is definitely the tamest part of this new phone. It’S not a flashy design at all to the point where it’s kind of funny.
It’S got this big forehead, it’s bigger than the chin, it doesn’t have the thinnest bezels. It has a flat display, which i actually like and there’s three colors black white and orange. I, like they’re, still doing the colored power buttons, so the panda one has i’m calling it panda. The panda one has an orange power button and the orange one here has this sort of pink power button. That’S okay! I wish it was white and they all have a matte black metal rail around the whole phone around the top. The sides – the speakers at the bottom and the usb type c port matte black – all the way around everything and it’s a nice weight of the whole phone – and i really like the soft touch matte finish on the backs – seems like 2019 – has really become the year Of matte black finishes, except except for the fact that the black phone is the only one.
That’S not matte finish so this orange one is matte on the back, the white one matte on the back and the all black phone, which could have been matte black. Everything is glossy for some reason, so i don’t know i feel slighted, but you can see what i mean. It’S a pretty simple design flat display, instead of curved over the edges, a solid pair of speakers with the second one being up in the earpiece at the top and on the back. You, of course, have your camera square bump, the infamous design trend to 2019, but it isn’t triple cameras up here.
It’S dual cameras, a flash and laser autofocus. So it’s one standard camera and one telephoto a 2x telephoto, so they didn’t include an ultra wide camera on the pixel 4. and i don’t know i was kind of waiting. This was something we’ve been waiting for for a long time to see.
Finally, multiple cameras in a pixel they’ve always done the best they could with software with one camera. But the one thing you can’t fake with software is an ultra wide so now that every other phone in this class has an ultrawide, i was pumped to see it. I was excited to see what they could do with an ultra wide camera on the pixel, and then they didn’t do it. That’S a bummer.
I feel like it’s actually a bigger deal that they didn’t include it than if they had just put it in anyway. So you have a standard camera and the 2x telephoto, and this will be better for some things like portrait mode, which now only works with the telephoto. You can’t take wide portrait photos anymore and the rest of everything else with the normal camera should still be fine. I mean this is one of those things.
I got a test, of course, for the full review to see if it’s actually better than the legendary pixel 3 or if there are instances where maybe just night mode is better or if astro, photography or those things they showed on stage with the stars and the Moon at night look better, but so far from what i’ve seen it looks to be another great smartphone camera. You can follow me on twitter. If you want to see the sample photos, i post and, of course, that’ll make its way into the full review, but yeah. So far, so good, so while wide angle can be fun, we think telephoto is more important. [ Applause, ] yeah. I definitely feel personally attacked all right. So why does the pixel 4 have such a big forehead? It’S bigger than the chin? It’S like notable uh.
I guess it’s better than the bathtub notch, but what’s the big deal here, pixel 4 now has an entire suite of front-facing sensors up at the top, including infrared and radar, which is new in smartphones to do what they call the fastest facial recognition, unlocking in any Smartphone and they’re so confident in it, in fact that they’ve gotten rid of any other biometric authentication, which means no fingerprint reader anywhere else on this phone, not under the glass not on the back just face unlock. So this all falls under motion sense. Parts of it seem pretty cool other parts of it, a little rough. So when motion sense is on, it uses the radar to sense when you’re coming near the phone to pick it up, and then it preps the cameras and the sensors to read your face and unlock it immediately as you’re picking the phone up. So i tried it out at the event i put my face data in with the new ui for that and gave it a shot and it worked pretty well, i picked up the phone from a flat surface and it was on and unlocked by the time i Even got it up to my face and i didn’t even have to press the power button, so that is pretty cool. I don’t really think anything about. The actual reading of your face is anything crazy proprietary. It’S still infrared, it still works at a decent amount of angles, but it’s using that radar to sense when you’re coming and picking up the phone and turning it on early, that’s the cool part, and then they use radar. Also to do a couple of other gesture based things, and these are much more hit or miss. I actually like the one where you have a timer or an alarm clock going off and when it starts beeping as you reach for the phone, the radar sees your hand coming and quiets down the alarm and that’s pretty cool.
Then you can swipe it away and it silences it. Now. I got the alarm quieting down as i reach for the phone to work every single time flawlessly, but the whole swipe away thing that didn’t always work for me every time – and this was a theme in general with the whole swiping thing it’s hard to get it Right, which you know could be rough in the morning if you’re trying not to hit things on your desk as you swipe your nightstand over and over.
But it’s also supposed to work for accepting or denying a call and moving forward or backward in media. And this was way harder to get it to work than it should be when you’re in a place where swiping over the phone is supported. You see this glowing happening at the top in the notification bar and you can see it move to the left or right when it works, and it recognizes your hand movement. But i honestly think i got it to work like 10 of the times that i actually tried to swipe it.
There was no real feedback about what i was doing wrong or how i could do it better. So this seems like something i’m probably never going to use. You might remember, lg, did this too on their last flagship with infrared, but i got ta give them credit because they actually had a little visual on the screen of at least how to do the weird hand, gesture better, like get closer or get further up top. There’S no such indicator on the pixel, so it’s frustratingly difficult anyway. My favorite feature about the pixel 4. Without a doubt, easy is a 90hz display, love that my first impression is. It looks great it’s nice and smooth as you’d expect from a high refresh rate display, and it’s a high resolution too. It’S 3200 by 1800.
So my first impressions of this oled are it’s pretty color, accurate, sharp, but not very bright. I definitely struggled outdoors to get bright enough um, but it that’s going to be its weakness. We’Ll learn more about this, as i use the phone more for the review and then the rest of the specs snapdragon 855, not a 55 plus uh, then you’re.
Looking at six gigs of ram starting at 128, gigs of storage and 2800 or 3700 milliamp hour battery, i think that smaller battery might be something to keep an eye on for the pixel 4, especially with that 90 hertz screen um, but the bigger one which i’m Testing the xl 3700 milliamp hours seems fine. I will find out as i test the phone but uh yeah, that’s something to keep an eye on and then it’s android 10.. So mostly what we’ve seen in android 10 is the same as previous betas on other phones.
Uh there’s the new face: unlock ui, like i mentioned, along with some camera, app improvements, an improvement to google assistant. That speeds it up even more and let’s use it hands-free more often, and there’s also now a pretty sweet built-in voice memo app, that’s actually impressive. It now transcribes everything you say in real time on the device and records it all in text as well. So you can see it marking down all your words as you speak, and then you can go back into search and use the text to search for each word.
You say and it’ll show where in the voice memo you said that word. So that’s pretty impressive. If i was a big voice, memos guy i’d be super into that. So look a lot of the stuff. It’S better! It’S not drastically impressive, like nothing really wowed me, and maybe that’s because everything leaked like we saw everything that was going to be coming. So it’s impossible to get surprised by the event, but yeah it’s felt like there were some serious gaps too, like okay, the no matte black version of the phone.
Okay, i get it. You want to mix it up, have a little glossy fingerprinty back with the matte black okay and then the specs are better and you have extra ram, but no snapdragon 855, plus it’s kind of sort of this weird time of year, where phones are starting to come Out now, with the snapdragon 855 plus, and this phone for more money doesn’t have it so it’s kind of tough and then the lack of the ultrawide was really that’s. Tough, like i was so looking forward to having like what could they do with an ultra wide pixel camera? How good could it be, and now we don’t have that and it seems like google might not even really care super much about that either. There’S no 2x button in the camera app it’s just kind of there.
I thought it would be mandatory if you adopt this whole square thing like you have to have triple cameras. We’Ll see i don’t know for 7.99. I think the pixel 4 that smaller one that’s gon na be a tough sell because that’s a hundred bucks more than the iphone 11 and uh. Well, that’s just a regular pixel four, but for the xl that starts at 8.99.
I think that’ll be more compelling. Interesting buy and that’s the one i’m testing, so that’s one to stay tuned for the full review of. But let me know what else you want to see in the comment section below.
If you have any concerns battery life, maybe the cameras, maybe there’s video quality things. You definitely want to see in the review. Let me know, but no matter what you do make sure you subscribe to be the first to see that when it comes out, techtobra rolls on lots of stuff happening.
This has been your first impressions of the pixel 4.. Thanks for watching catch, you guys in the next one peace you .