i've been daily driving the pixel 4xl for a little over a week now and i have
got some thoughts you know i never thought i'd miss the
display notch but this forehead is more of a five head
wow my voice sounds really weird a front-facing radar might be the
biggest feature i never knew i needed i just wish it worked a lot more
consistently this can't be my voice this doesn't sound right
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apple i hope you're taking notes because this
is how you refresh a product every year without losing track of your unique
design language gone are the two-tone back the large chin bar and the rear
fingerprint sensor and yet somehow the off-colored lock button
smooth finish and the feel in the hand including of course the delightful
squeeze to summon the assistant are all unmistakably pixel
which isn't to say that every pixel fan is gonna like google's latest refresh
let's begin with the good it's faster than ever with a snapdragon 855 chipset
and six gigs of ram the oled screen is brighter and more beautiful than ever
and is variable refresh rate to boot allowing it to drop down to 60 to save
power and jump up to 90 hertz for that buttery smooth scrolling and gaming and
the software continues to be clean and responsive with some amazing features
both now and in the pipeline live caption blew my mind the pixel 4 has the
ability to subtitle most of the media that plays through your phone it's not
fully supported for calls or songs yet unfortunately and it does take a toll on
your battery as it uses your cpu that's why it's coming to the pixel 3 and 3a
devices in december but apparently never to the pixel 2
but this is a game changer for anyone who wants to watch a quick video clip
without disturbing anyone on the bus or who just generally has a hard time
hearing phone speakers which i guess transitions me perfectly
into the controversial stuff don't it in pursuit of slimmer bezels google has
ditched the dual front-facing speakers that i praised last time around in favor
of a single bottom firing speaker and an amplified earpiece speaker the sound
quality stereo effect and overall loudness is still comfortably flagship
though so as far as i'm concerned no harm no foul but i can't say the same
for the available storage options 128 gigs on your top of the line sku
what kind of game are you playing here google the i three gigs of ram is enough
phone moved to 256 gigs three years ago
i mean this might not be obvious to you but lots of us store things other than
our photography portfolio on our phones and 128 gigs with no micro sd expansion
is a straight up deal breaker for a lot of people that was a rhetorical question
before by the way it's fairly obvious that the limited storage game here is
getting pixel users to sign up for google cloud storage because here comes
middle finger number two the fourth generation pixel no longer includes
unlimited storage for full quality images
big oof now let's get to the big one the
pixel 4 series's technology loaded forehead is actually slimmer than last
generation but you'd never notice it because of how out of place and last gen
it looks compared to i mean if i'm speaking honestly even the iphone 11
series so why would they do this well in
addition to the usual ambient light sensor front-facing camera and earpiece
speaker google has jammed in a carbon copy of apple's face id sensor array for
accurate fast hands-free unlocking and
a mother fracking radar chip so it's these last two that power their new
flagship's biggest new features face unlock and motion sense
the idea is that the radar can sense when you're about to pick up your phone
so it can prep the cameras for its face unlock when the device is still on its
way to your face and it works pretty well
yes you still do have to have it pointed at your face before it actually unlocks
something that is not true of a fingerprint reader rear mounted or
otherwise but once it's there it unlocks in what i would describe as a reasonable
if not impressive amount of time and thank you google there's no unnecessary
swipe up like on the iphone your phone is just open
open for business like lttstore.com
is face unlock faster than a fingerprint reader's best case scenario though
no but considering how often you need to unlock a phone while your hands are wet
covered in gloves or otherwise occupied i would wager that the pixel 4 has the
faster average unlock time across every scenario i mean it's definitely faster
than pulling out my galaxy fold whose review is coming out really soon so
subscribe so you don't miss it and it was surprisingly reliable for a
first attempt but motion sense is also supposed to be
useful when you're not picking up your phone it can turn off the screen when
you're not around only to light up again when you reach for the device and allow
you to control apps by simply waving at them letting you skip tracks
silence alarms and buzz phone calls
too bad and i'm sure i'm not alone when i say i saw this one coming
it barely works it's about as consistently inconsistent
as the lg g8 air motion which is a
crying shame because i actually had one really good run where i was walking down
the street with my bluetooth headphones in and my phone in my hand just like
waving at it to skip tracks and it felt like the future for that one
golden moment which made it all the more jarring when the illusion was broken by literally
10 failed attempts in a row like should i have my fingers separated should i
have them together closer further like i could actually see myself getting
really used to silencing my alarm clock by just
waving in its general direction instead of picking up my phone and
poking at it like a drunk chimp but that only matters if google can get
motion sense to a usable state via software updates onto the sensors on the
back of the phone it's a giant square camera bump but in
typical pixel fashion it has one less lens than you might expect based on what
the competition is doing two not three
but that is one more than last year enabling the portrait mode to work on
larger objects from farther away and honestly the pixelforce portrait mode
clearly just doesn't need the third camera because it is head and shoulders
above the iphone 11 pro not only does the pixel keep the shadows
and skin detail where the iphone just smooths it out but let's take a closer
look at our subject's hair this is one of the most challenging
things for portrait mode to handle and where apple ends up smudging or
eliminating wispies google i mean
honestly there's just no word for it but wow
that is a single strand of hair ladies and gentlemen
across our test photos the pixel 4 was consistently the best at capturing a
scene the way the human eye sees it this room had bar lighting that was much
moodier than the iphone captured and the pixel 4's ai-based white balance did a
good job of de-oranging this musician google has also given us two separate
sliders to live preview and control the highlights and low lights in a shot a
feature that is just plain not present on any other phone
not only does it give you a better starting point to edit from if you're that kind of person but if you're not
and you don't want to do any post-production work this is a really smart way to give more creativity and
control to the user and make shot composition way more fun
with that said google did not include an ultra wide lens so that's a creative
tool that the iphone 11 pro offers that is outright absent on the pixel 4.
however i would make the argument that the pixel's light and shadow controls
are going to be more useful and more often but the gap between good and great
phones when it comes to stills photography is absolutely narrowing and
video is where apple still has a commanding lead over their android
competition is what i used to say thankfully google
has obviously put a ton of work into the video recording capabilities of the
pixel 4. as a 4k video camera it is
really impressive like if i didn't tell you that this wide shot was taken on a
phone be honest i doubt that any but the most
trained eye would have a chance of noticing the autofocus lock-on is
intuitive to use and exceeded our expectations and so did the image
stabilization while moving between these two shots it's very difficult to make
out a difference between apple and google's latest and greatest and
honestly both of them almost look like they're gimbal stabilized it's
outstanding even slow motion recording which can be an achilles heel for even great phone
cameras was as good as the iphone it's different i would say there's more
softness in the edges of this frame at 240 fps and a more pronounced
stair-stepping effect in the fine details but the sharpness of our subject
and better dynamic range make up for this in my opinion and of course it
wouldn't be a pixel launch without some pixel specific features and the biggest
one of the year is the rollout of google assistant 2.0 google's engineers have
miniaturized the assistant from 100 gigs to 500 megabytes small enough to run
locally on the device now including natural language processing this has
enabled a new app called recorder that you can use to make audio recordings
with transcriptions so your phone can basically take meeting minutes now
having text with the audio also makes all these audio files searchable and
since it's happening on device it's more secure and you don't require an internet
connection if you're a fan of texting with your voice then this works about as
well as you'd expect gets it right most of the time but you got to be realistic
if you're in a meeting with multiple people that are talking over each other
it does tend to become a bit of a mess it also wouldn't be a pixel launch
without some inexplicable bugs so i was browsing condos in a nearby suburb and
the address of one of them just straight up burned onto my phone
i closed chrome i opened other apps and it just stayed there
guys what you're looking at is not a simulation of the effect this is an
actual screen recording i had to reboot my phone to get rid of it like
what i've never seen anything like that on an
android phone an iphone any phone
so then should you buy the pixel 4 well i spent
most of my time with the xl so i'm going to tailor my thoughts to that one
it feels pretty iterative but other than the galaxy fold what new
phone isn't the battery isn't as big as some competitors which is particularly
problematic given the 90hz display and it costs more than an iphone 11
but it still delivers on the pixel promise
of having a category leading camera and innovative bare android plus software
with timely post sales support so it comes with a big recommendation
for shutter bugs especially ones who don't want an iphone and a more lukewarm
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linus drop tips you bastards
thanks for watching guys and i will see you in the galaxy fold video