The long awaited (and massively leaked) Google Pixel 4 has been launched today by Google. There has been so much drama around this phone, from Google leaking the phone to other third parties leaking the design and we practically know most of the features of the phone.
The Pixel 4 sport a new design with the most prominent feature being the square camera hump at the back. It has the glass-metal sandwich we are used to on flagship smartphones. However, we have some key changes.
Display
First the display. The notch is gone. Instead, we have supposedly great displays according to Google. The Pixel 4 has a 5.7 inch full HD+ OLED display while the XL version has a 6.3 inch QHD+ OLED display. The new thing is that they both run at 90Hz, which makes them the latest entrants in the era of high refresh rate displays. High refresh rate displays are perceivably smoother but they have the added hit on battery life.
Facial recognition
Google has now dived into the hands-free gesture life with the Pixel 4. Their new Motion Sense feature uses radar t sense motion and use the Pixel by waving your hand around the phone. Motion sense will allow you to snooze alarms, silence phone calls and skip songs. The phone also features a dot projector and flood emitter which aid in better face recognition
Camera
The other headlining feature is the camera. Google decided to change the appearance of the camera rig at the back. The cameras, mic and flash sit in this square-ish hump at the back.
The main camera is a 12.2MP unit with a now brighter f/1.7 lens and with optical image stabilization. The new lens is a telephoto one and it is a 16MP unit with an f/2.4 lens. “While wide angle can be fun, we think telephoto is more important,” they said. This is an obvious dig to the trend of adding a wide angle camera to the suite of primary cameras. There is now only one front camera with a f/2.0 aperture.
The primary cameras have improved Night Sight that adds an astrophotography mode for taking better images of stars. There is also a HDR+ simulation on screen so that you can see what the phone will generate after you take the HDR+ photo. Google also touts its better portrait mode which has been enhanced thanks to the telephoto camera and better algorithms.
Google Pixel smartphones still take class leading photos and I believe the Pixel 4 will continue this proud trend set by its predecessors.
A neat favourite feature
Google displayed a really cool feature with the Pixel 4. It has a new recorder app that uses AI to transcribe in real time your dictation. The best thing about it is that it does this offline, which is amazing and shows Google’s true power at machine learning. The app can also do note search of your recordings which means that phone is very attractive for a journalist for example.
The ‘other features’
The Google Pixel 4 features the flagship Snapdragon 855 system on a chip and now 6GB of RAM. Reviewers complained of the sluggish performance of the 4GB RAM trotting Pixel 3 so this year, that will change (hopefully).It has the usual dual stereo speakers, water resistance (IPX8), fast wireless and wired charging USB-C port and runs on Android 10.
You can get it with either 64GB or 128GB of internal storage plus unlimited storage at high quality with Google Photos. The battery capacities are still small for today standards.
The Pixel 4 has a tiny 2800mAh battery while the 4 XL has a 3700 mAh battery. Since they run 90Hz displays, the battery life of these phones will be put into question.
It will ship in three colour schemes: Just Black, Clearly White and the limited edition Oh So Orange. The Pixel 4 starts at $799 while the XL starts at $899 for the base 64GB models and $100 extra for the 128GB models.
