Google announced all the features and showed off the Pixel 4 and 4XL at the Made by Google 2019 event and it looks like a beast. Let’s start with some of the specs which are the same between the two devices. They have the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 SoC, 6GB of RAM, 64GB or 128GB of storage, with no microSD expansion or headphone jack as usual.
While there weren’t a lot of big changes to appearance the phone comes out fo the box with Android 10. You will notice something that may be exciting for those of you that like to customize your phones. Google added the new Pixel Themes app that lets you choose your font, accent color, background and more.
Another thing worth noting is the new recorder app which will actually transcribe all of your recordings so that you can search them. This is something I didn’t even know I needed.
Better Google Assistant with Pixel 4 & 4XL
The biggest issue with Google Assistant on older Pixel devices is the delay but now its integrated so well that the response times are much better. The biggest reason for this lag time was having to send every request to Google’s language models on their data centers. Now they will have a local version on the device allowing things that do not require the web to respond and complete the actions almost instantly. This would be things like setting an alarm or opening an app and anything else that can be completed if your device is offline. Of course when asking anything that required an outside source like the weather it will still have the delay we love to hate.
Assistant Continuous Conversation
My favorite feature added to the Assistant is continuous conversation. You will no longer have to keep saying “Hey Google” or “Okay Google” over and over again. When getting information, being able to as a followup question or for more details without saying the hot-word is amazing.
Best Smartphone Display Award says something
Google’s 90Hz displays for the Pixel 4 and 4 XL have been awarded an A+ rating by DisplayMate along with the “Best Smartphone Display Award. Google calls their Displays “Smooth Displays” allowing them to be toggled between 60 and 90Hz in the settings.
Motion Sense & Gestures
Google has added a new feature called Motion Sense that will sense a users motion as in allowing you to snooze alarms and silence calls with a swipe of your hand. This is available because of the motion-sensing Soli chip beside your front facing camera.
Pixel 4 and 4XL Face Detection Security
On the same note, Google has removed the rear fingerprint sensor and replaced it with a much better face detection made possible by Motion Sense. The secure face recognition comes in the form of two unlock cameras, a dot projector and flood illuminator. The Soli chip will also proactively turn the face unlock feature on to allow quick phone unlocking.
Live HDR+ Dual Camera with Wide Range and Night Sight
Google is putting a dual-camera on both the Pixel 4 and 4XL. The rear-facing camera is a dual sensor 12MP camera with a 16MP telephoto lens for 2x zoom. The new camera setup allows for wider shots and more depth to images. Accurate distance and depth information is handled by its time-of-flight (ToF) sensor.
Live HDR+ may be one of the best time saving features on the new Pixel’s allowing HDR+ processing before ever taking the photo. Until now we have always had to take the picture and then use a photo editor to get the same results. Imagine being able to use the Dual Exposure controls to tweak the photo beforehand and then moving on to the next photo without editing again.
Night Sight is yet another feature that has Google have been working on to improve astrophotography by getting rid of the noise you see in darker photos as the sun goes down. Seems to be a vast improvement over the Pixel 3 when taking photo’s in low light.
What have we lost with the new Flagship?
Honestly a sad loss it that unlimited original image quality backup that every Pixel to date has had is no longer available. Looks like its been replaced with a promotion for 3 months of Google One cloud service for free. I’d imagine those still racking up the backups of full size images with their old phones are loving this change (he says sarcastically)
Battery Life?
Sadly the Pixel 4 and 4 XL’s battery capacities are no more impressive than the Pixel 3 and actually the Pixel 4 has a 2800mAh cell which is 115mAh less that the older Pixel 3. The larger Pixel 4XL however has a larger battery that its predecessor at 3,700mAh. As bad as the battery life is for the Pixel 3 it seems the 4 is slightly worse.
Pixel 4 and 4XL Price and Availability
Both devices are available for pre-order October 15th with a ship date of October 24th. At this time you can choose between Just Black, Clearly White and a limited edition Oh so Orange. The Pixel 4 starts with a price tag of $799 and the larger Pixel 4XL starts at $899. Both can be purchased unlocked at the Google Store and through all the major carriers including Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, AT&T, Spectrum Mobile, and Xfinity Mobile. Currently Google Fi is offering a $100 Google Fi bill credit to anyone who orders a Pixel 4 (4XL) and activates it with the Google Fi.