(light music) - It's Pixel 4 time. You know the
drill. Two sizes, three colors,two storage options, a million leaks,
Googlesoftware, a really good camera, the whole Pixel deal. It's high
expectations, in other words. The Pixel 4 is the flagship
The Pixel 4 has a radar chip up top
It's what Google says Android should be. It also wants it to be
likethe default Android phone. Plus, this is the first yearthat Google is
selling it on all four major US carriers. So, we expect it to be good enough to
really start selling in big volume. But it's not selling in India. I guess I
didn't expect that. Anyway, the point is, the Pixelis all about expectations.
You knew what to expectbecause everything leaked. But now that it's
here, can itlive up to those expectations especially when it starts at$799 and
goes up to 1,000? Let's get into it.
(light music) If we're talking about design, we just have to say
itout loud at the start. The Pixel 4 and the iPhone11 look kinda the same. It's
not just funny, it's almost uncanny. They both have matte glass on some models
and glossy on other models. They both have the square camera bump.
They have some weird stuffat
the top of their screens. I mean, don't get me wrong,I see the differences.
Which one looks better toyou is a matter of taste. The Pixel has these
reallyobvious matte rails on the side. It's not trying to hidethem or polish
them away. They're a main part ofthe look of this phone. The matte rails makeit
easier to grip too. So far, I think the whole thing is a little bit less
scratch-pronethan the Pixel 3 was. Whatever. I still love the colorpop on the
power button.
I still think the blackone is the most boring one. But you know
what, they all look the same when you put 'em in a case anyway. But before you
put 'em in a case, take a second to appreciate that this is the best build
quality Google has ever done on a phone. Okay.
Let's talk about the forehead. It's there. It's funny-looking,
andit's not symmetrical. Samsung's hole-punch probablylooks a little bit better
or a Notch would give youjust a little bit more screen to put status bar stuff,
butthe Notch kinda looks doofy. Can we just stop having these arguments? Unless
you want stuff poppingout of the top of your phone with motors, maybe youdo,
there's gonna be stuff at the top of your screen.
I think this looks okay. I've gotten used to it. (light music) Face
unlock on the Pixel4 uses infrared projectors just like the iPhone. Just like
on the iPhone,it looks super wild when you point a realinfrared camera at it.
It has a decent field of view, but it's maybe not quiteas wide as the iPhone
11's. The infrared means thatit works in the dark, and the system isdesigned to
detect depth, so I wasn't able to trick it with a video or a photo of myself.
Maybe it could be trickedwith a mask though. I don't know. But if
you're worried aboutsomebody making a life-like mask of you, maybe you
shouldlook at other things that's going on with your life. One thing you should
knowis that it doesn't do the extra security step of making sure that you're
looking at it.
That means if you're asleep,someone could just point it at you and
unlock it becauseit works with your eyes closed.
So, only sleep around people you trust? I mean, I don't know.
That's just good life advice.
Anyway, once it's set up, it just works like you would expect it
to. It unlocks the phone, and it can also authenticate Google Pay or bank apps
or whatever.
You just point your faceat it, and it unlocks. It's fast, like
really fast. It's at least as fast as the iPhone. I wanna talk about why it
feels so fast.
But before I get there,let's talk about radar. (light music) You've
heard it, right? It's a Project Soli chip, but the feature is called motion
sense. It's the thing that I'm sureeverybody is going to say is a little flaky
becauseit is a little flaky. You can wave your hand leftor right to go back or
forward if you use like a podcast are playing. You can also wave yourhand to
dismiss phone calls or snooze alarms
It's the most prominent, most engaging feature of motion sense.
That's why it's a bummer thatit's the most flaky part. There are
times where it works every time.
I don't even have to think about it. I'm just keeping my eyeson my
computer or whatever and I'm flicking awaysongs that I don't want. But then it
doesn't workand I'm like what, also why. There have been gestures on phones
before, and nobody used them.
I think these gestures aregonna fare slightly better because they
don't hit your battery life and you can just be alittle bit more flippant with
your gestures when you use them
But you know what, feelfree to be annoyed with them or just ignore
them completely. It's cool. It's cool because even ifGoogle just took those
gestures away entirely, I would still be glad that Soli is on this phone
because of the othertwo things that it does. The first is it detects your
presence. It just knows if you're nearby. When you walk away, thealways on
screen turns off. That's cool. It actually works really well. The other thing
that worksreally well is reach. The phone knows if you're reaching for it, and
it can do stuff when that happens.
So, if a ringtone or alarm is blaring, it quiets down whenyour hand
gets near it, so you can look at the phone and then decide what you wannado,
wave it away or whatever. And if the screen is offand you reach for it, it
lights up the face unlock cameras and starts looking for you. That is part of
the reasonwhy face unlock feels so fast. It is a split second fasterthan the
accelerometer method that the iPhone uses. Google also defaults togoing straight
into the phone instead of unlocking to the lock screen, which makes it feel
even faster yet. Oh by the way, if you want,you can keep the lock screen and
then have to swipeup to get into the phone.
That's helpful if you use your phone mainly through notifications
like I do. Oh (laughs) also, there's Pokemon. Yes, there's Pokemon wallpaper.
It is very cute. It's also useful because youcan show weather conditions on top
of the Pokemon. You can wave them or you can pet at them. Look, I have seen
peoplesay that they would prefer an in-screen fingerprint sensor, and I am
saying that faceunlock is unequivocally better. Maybe in a year or two,they'll
do both the fingerprint and face unlock, butI'm not asking for it. (light
music) Okay.
It's camera time, and Iknow what you're here for. You wanna know
whether or not the Pixel 4 took the best smartphone camera crown back from the
iPhone 11 Pro. Let me tell you why that's complicated. Do you remember
Nilay'sreview of the iPhone 11 Pro? He had to say that this phone right here,
the Pixel 4 was right around the corner when he was judging that camera. Now
I'm reviewing thePixel, and I have to say that Apple's Deep Fusion'ssweater
mode software upgrade is right around the corner. So, I have to mention it.
It's practically diabolical,and
it means that I can't make a definitive judgment right now. Look, if you force
meto pick one right now, I have to admit that the iPhone 11 Pro gives you much
more versatility. It has an ultra wide camerafor taking more phone photos, and
it's way better at video. But when it comes tostill photo photography and night
mode and all of that, I do think there are a lot ofuseful things to talk about
with these two cameras. Plus, the Pixel has a few new features that we need to
talk about, especially now that it hasa second telephoto lens. Let's just look
at some photos. Here's a shot of Will,our creative director
It's in very dim light. This kind of tells the whole story. The
iPhone still trendstowards yellow tones while the Pixel is a little bit bluer.
The Pixel has a look. Even though it's slightlywarmer and less contrasty than
the last Pixel, it'sstill much more dramatic than the iPhone. Apple does
sharpen a little bit more, and it does maintain alittle bit more detail too,
and more detail is good,but look, the color balance on the Pixel is smarter.
Google is analyzing theactual things in the image and guessing what thewhite
balance should be based on what it sees whereApple is treating white balance a
little bit more like atraditional camera would. All right. Next, let's talk
about telephoto.
You see, Google chose a telephoto lens instead of an ultra wide
lens or, you know, just givingus both for some reason. But the main reason
is,Google thinks that it can use its super zoom tech alongwith that second 2X
lens to make zoom way better. You know what? It's way better. Look at the zoom
on ourvideo producer Maria. This is an 8X zoom.
The iPhone, it looks like it'sa cropped, it's noisy as hell while
the Pixel is much more natural. I mean, look at her jacket. There's just so
much more detail here. So, what have we learned? The Pixel wins on zoom. The
iPhone gets detail better sometimes, but it is a little bit yellower. The Pixel
gets color balancebetter on the whole though, and it is more opinionated. The Pixel
has a look, and itconsistently gets that look. What about night mode? You can
kind of get eitherone to make a better photo. It's a little bit of a crap
shoot. The iPhone's multipleframes use longer exposure, so it can get a little
bitmore detail on still objects, but it messes up moving ones. Just look at the
cloud here on this photo. The Pixel though, it justkeeps on doing its look. In
dim light, I thinkthey're a little bit closer to each other, but thePixel can
get more detail. It's the exposure time thing again. The Pixel does more
shortexposures with more math. So, that means it's moreforgiving of shaky
hands. All right. What about portrait mode? The Pixel uses the second telephoto
lens to improve portrait mode, and it is better than it was before, but I still
think it's not up to the iPhone's standard, which has a better gradual
drop-off, and it also manages thehair better in this photo. The other feature
is astrophotography.
I just have to admit that Icouldn't get far enough away from light
pollution to really test this. Cities, man. (light music) Now the Pixel has a
newfeature that lets you adjust the shadows of HDR+ along with the photo's
overall brightness. It's an extra slider basically. Once you get how it
works,you can take a photo from meh to really good. Here. Here are some
photosfrom our podcast studio. Both of these are from the Pixel, but the second
one is the one I adjusted to look more accurate. The blacks are just exactly
right here. I could do that because thePixel now shows a live preview of what
the HDR+ result willbe right in the viewfinder. It's really useful.
I do wish that it workedfor portrait mode. There's only one selfie
camera,which I'm kinda sad about 'cause I really did likethe ultra wide selfie
camera last year, but Googledid set the field of view on this selfie camera to
90 degrees, which is a little bit widerthan usual, and that helps. It's a good
selfie camera because Google is good at software.
Once again, it gets thatvery consistent Pixel look. Finally, and
you knew this was coming, Google has some catchingup to do with video. You can
get good video. Here's something that Becka,our video director shot, but you
max out at 4K30 on the rear camera and 1080 on the front. Apple and Samsung
arejust way ahead of Google when it comes to video. (light music) Have you
noticed that I haven't mentioned the camera hardware specs, like, at all? I
mean, here they are, butthey're not that different except for the existenceof
the second lens.
Though I do hear that the sensor is a little bit less noisy this
year. Google is still using custom silicon, but now it's the Pixel Neural Core.
That's why you can see theHDR+ preview in the viewfinder.
It also speeds up a few other operations. But the truth is, the
wholestory now is software. Apple caught up, which meansthat on a technical
level, these cameras are basically equivalent, but they're making different
choices about how they take and process photos. You're dealing with different
cameras having different aesthetics. This is basically Nikon versus Canon, or,
I don't know, Kodakversus Fuji for film nerds.
They both look really good,
but they're definitely different. Now will Apple's Deep Fusionchange that when
it arrives? I kinda doubt it. I played it within the beta a little, but until
it actually comes out, it's just not fair foranybody to make that judgment.
What I can tell you isthat both phones are great, but the Pixel has a look,
andit nails it almost every time while the iPhone is justa little bit more
neutral. I still think that my RX100camera takes better photos than either of
them. But the Pixel and theiPhone take better photos than any other phone. The
camera still shouldn'tdrive your purchase decision between these two phones,
but if you care mainly about video, the Pixel 4 is probably not for you. (light
music) Once your phone hits acertain level of speed, once it feels more
thanfast enough for most stuff, the most important performance spec is actually
battery life. You can have the fastest processor or the highest resolutionscreen,
but it won't matter if your battery dies.
The battery life on the smallerPixel 4 is not great, Bob. I've
averaged like four hoursof screen time every day, which is not enough. It's
about what I wasgetting on the Pixel 3. You could get through a whole day by
using it less intensivelyand staying in dark mode, reducing screen brightness,
and turning off the 90hertz display option. All that is just a recipefor
battery anxiety. You shouldn't have tothink about all of that. The
2,800-milliamp battery is not enough. Luckily with the Pixel 4 XL, you don't
really have to worry as much. It should go a full day for most people on the
3,700-milliampbattery without having to do a whole bunch of tweaks.
But when it comes to actualperformance stuff, it's good. But the
main thing is Googlewent with six gigs of RAM, which means that apps
aren'tclosing in the background on me as often, which thank God. Anyway, look,
there'sno getting around it. You will find Androidphones with better specs.
That has just never beenwhat the Pixel is about. It's about a cleaner,nicer
overall experience. Really, the Pixel 4 makes Android 10 just make way more
sense to me now.
It's clear that the twothings were really designed for each other.
The best part of thatexperience is the screen. (light music) It's really good
with niceangles and good color, but it is a little bit too dim especially in
bright sunlight. Google also says that it canchange the color temperature based
on the color inthe room that it's in kinda like Apple's True Tone. Google calls
it AmbientEQ, but you know what, it's so subtle that I can hardly see it. But
the main thing thatI love about this screen is the new smooth display
featurethat lets the refresh rate go at 90 hertz.
You notice it the most when you scroll. It just makes Android
feelsmoother and less janky. Google does say that itdrops down to 60 hertz when
it's not needed to save battery life. So, we got that going for us. Now the
other reason thatthe Pixel just feels faster and nicer is that it's way, way
better at understanding spoken English. Google loaded its entire modelfor
understanding English into the Pixel Neural Core,so it doesn't have to ask the
Internet to transcribeyour speech for you.
It speeds up everything. It has me using the Google Assistant more
because I trust that it'll go faster. This seems like a small thing, but it
really does changethe vibe of the phone. So, when I need to talkto the Google
Assistant, I just point my face at itto make sure it's unlocked and then I say
hey, I'm notgonna set up your thing. But before, I'd have to pick it up and hit
the fingerprint sensor. Now it's just so much better,except when it's not
better because for some reason, ifyou have a G Suite account on your phone,
even if it'snot the primary Google account for your Android phone, you don't
get access to the new Assistant. Hopefully, Google will fix this problem or at
least explain whybecause it's super annoying. Now that the Pixel 4is better at
language, it can also do live caption,which makes captions on any video that you'rewatching
on the phone. It even works with thesound completely off.
Just remember to turn itoff when you're not using it because it can
eat up battery life. They also added a new record app, and it does live
transcriptions. It works pretty well. There are a few missedwords here or
there, but it's more than good enough for you to go back andsearch for that one
thing that you're looking for. (light music) The thing that you can't getfrom
the leaks or the specs or even the earlyimpressions is what it's like to just
use the Pixel 4.
You have this expectation, this perception of what the phone is,
but the Pixel 4 isactually a little different from other Android phones because
it feels like amore complete experience. You pay for that experience though.
It's 799 for the small one with 64 gigs. The big one is 100 bucks more. And you
have to pay 100bucks more on either one for 128 gigs of storage.
In a world where the iPhone 11 costs 699 and the OnePlus T costs600
bucks, that's a lot. Plus, Google stopped giving out free original quality
photouploads for Google Photos to Pixel users, which meansthat you're probably
gonna need to start paying for aGoogle One cloud storage.
The Pixel 4 and the 4XL, they ain't cheap. Is it worth that much
money? Here's my calculus. Face unlock is justbetter than a fingerprint because
it skips the stepof having to tap a thing to get into your phone. The voice
recognition skipsa step of having to ask the Internet to figure outwhat it was
you just said. Motion sense makes the phonereact to you just a little before
you even touch it. The smooth display is just smoother.
And the camera is betterthan any other Android phone, and it
matches the iPhone11 Pro in a lot of ways. It might not be faster on paperthan
other Android phones, but the Pixel 4 feels faster. It feels more seamless. Now
there are issues. The battery life and thevideo quality in both of them could
be a lot better. But I can tell you that Ienjoy using the Pixel more than other
Android phones because all those little improvements, they really do add up.
The Pixel 4 is the bestexample yet of why specs don't tell you the whole story
about whether or not an Androidphone is actually any good because the Pixel 4
is really good.
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