It's been six months since we got our Google Pixel 4 XL, so you know that
means, we're going to do our in depth, six months later review of the device. Now in
this review I'm going to go over the main features of the device, paying
special attention to the features that did and did not have a significant
impact on my day to day use with this device. I'm also going to go over how
well the device has held up over the past six months, answer some questions
from our subscribers, and then ultimately give you my recommendations when it
comes to the Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL. Let's dive in. I've been waiting
patiently to do a long term review of the Google 4 XL that Google
gave us in October. So much was said about this phone at its launch and
people kind of went nuts over it and not necessarily in a good way. I've been
using it as my personal main phone every single day for the past six months and
overall I really like using the Google Pixel 4 XL as my main phone. Now
while Google did give us this device for free, they did not pay for us to produce
this video, so all the thoughts and reactions you're going to hear for me
towards the Pixel 4 and 4 XL are completely my own. Alright, with that
disclaimer out of the way, let's go ahead and dive into the main features that had
a significant impact on my day to day use with this device. When you first pick
up the phone and use it there are two features that immediately stand out as
an improvement over the previous pixel devices that I've used. One is the 90
Hertz display which makes everything feel silky smooth on this phone like
gestures and navigating the UI. The second thing that immediately stands out
as an improvement is face unlock. It's blazing fast and for me much more
convenient than unlocking my phone with a fingerprint sensor in almost every
scenario. It even works when you're wearing glasses and sunglasses which you
know, is pretty cool. Now the only scenario where this feature doesn't work
that well for me is when I'm laying in bed at night and I have my face stuffed
into a pillow. Speaking of trying to unlock your phone while you're in bed,
one part of this feature that people really freaked out about was you could
actually, at launch at least, unlock this phone with your eyes closed. Now
as of this recording, that part of the feature has been fixed with a software
update. Now as I started to use the phone more some other features immediately
stood out as useful. First the camera is really good for still photos and for
videos it's pretty good as well. I still think Apple's video quality is better
than the pixel's but by no means is Google's terrible or anything like that.
Now the night mode for still photos is quite good and having a zoom lens has
also been nice. I'm also a fan of the selfie camera which presents
great-looking detailed images. In general the photos you take with this pixel
capture a lot of detail and two things that make it much more usable than other
smartphone cameras I've used are the manual exposure and shadow controls that
the pixel gives you as well as the live HDR preview. You can make the image look
exactly how you want before you take the photo which is better than trying to
edit the image especially an HDR image after you've already taken the photo. Now
thankfully the pixel can shoot in RAW which is of course the file format you
want to use if you're going to edit photos in any way. Another big feature of
this phone that I thought was more of a gimmick at first but I've actually grown
to really like is the Google Pixel feature drops. Just like my Tesla, my
Google Pixel 4 XL will get periodic software updates that contain some major
features. Over the past six months we've gotten several new features like dark
themes scheduling, which allows you to schedule your phone to transition to
dark theme at a specific time, a shortcut to your credit and debit cards and
passes in Google Wallet by long pressing the power button, and my absolute
favorite feature call screen, which is a feature that separates the Pixel from
almost any other phone out there. Call screen utilizes the onboard Google
Assistant which we'll talk about in a second, to pick up an incoming call that
the assistant doesn't recognize and screen the call on the device. If the
person calling says something to the assistant your phone will then ring and
a notification will appear with what the person told the assistant, giving you the
context you need to decide if you want to pick up the call or not. If the person
calling doesn't say anything your phone will not ring and the
assistant will end the call. This feature has basically eliminated all spam calls
from ringing my phone. Yes I know, it is paradise, it is it is great, you, you could
get you could get there too if you have a pixel and the reason for that is
I've set this feature so that anyone in my Google contacts can actually call me
directly, but if you're trying to ring my phone and you're not in my Google
contacts, you are going to get screened by the Google Assistant and my phone is
not going to ring right away. The Google Assistant on the Pixel 4 is unique
because it lives on the device itself. For certain requests like for opening up
an app or turning on the flashlight it doesn't need to be connected to the
Internet to perform those tasks meaning those tasks are wicked fast to perform.
Also I love the squeeze to trigger the assistant functionality on the phone and
that's something I actually use quite often. One other thing that surprised me
about this phone is how good Google's keyboard is on it. Now you can get G
board on other phones even your iPhone, but the way it works on the pixel seems
more seamless I find that it's autocorrect and Swift typing is way more
accurate and less frustrating than Apple's default keyboard and each time
you hit a key on the keyboard, on the pixel you get this little haptic click
which I absolutely love. I also love that you can search for specific emojis or
gif images right from within the keyboard and overall it's just a simple
design and it's why I prefer using Google's keyboard on the pixel versus
any other keyboard I've used on any other phone. Moving on, screen attention
is another feature that I found so useful these past six months. Now I read
a lot of news articles and one thing that has always frustrated me with
previous phones is that I would have to keep tapping on the screen to make sure
that the screen wouldn't turn off while I was still reading an article. Screen
attention allows the phone's camera to look and see if you're still looking at
the screen and if you are, it won't turn off the screen. It's been one of those
features that once you get used to it, you don't want to use a phone that
doesn't have it. Now the last feature of this phone that has made a big impact on
my day to day life is actually Android 10, specifically Google's version of
Android 10 that you can only get on the Pixel devices. Now I'm dabbled with
Android phones before in the past and as an iOS user and somebody who owned every
single Apple product like on the planet, they always felt incredibly foreign and
just didn't feel quite right. They didn't feel snappy, they just, I don't know, I didn't
like the experience. This version of Android however feels very close to the
current version of iOS and it gets so many little details right. I actually
found that I prefer it over the current version of iOS. Now of course there are
some things I still miss about my iPhone like AirDrop, I can't believe there is not
a comparable built-in feature into Android like AirDrop. I also miss getting
phone calls and text messages on my Apple Watch. I also just miss getting
customized notification vibrations so like two vibrations for text message
versus one vibration for a tweet. So when your phone's in your pocket, you can kind
of tell what the notifications are as they come in and on Android
there's no, that's not a default feature within the OS. Overall though I don't
actually miss my iPhone as much as I thought I would, which kind of shocked me.
The Pixel's version of Android is just a joy to use.
I love Google's overall Android layout, its gesture navigations, nice design,
better notification management, simple interface, and it just gets so many of
the little details right, for example if you open a private browser tab when you
scroll down your notifications a reminder notification automatically
appears for you to close your private browsing tabs, or swipe down on a
notification to view more information about it, or the favorite apps drawer
which uses machine learning to guess which app you want to open at a
particular time, or smart lock, which keeps your phone unlocked when it's
connected to certain Bluetooth devices like your car or your headphones, or if
your phone is in a specific location like at your house. Alright well that's
what I've liked about the phone and in the six months I've had it, I'm happy to
report that I haven't noticed any slowdowns in this phone's performance. In
fact, thanks to those feature drops, all I can say is that the
experience has actually gotten better over time not worse. Alright, now let's
dive into some of the downsides. First, battery life. The battery life on my
Google Pixel 4 XL is worse than the battery life I experienced on my iPhone
8 Plus. The XL typically lasts me about a day but keep in mind almost days
when I'm at my desk there's a charger there for the phone and when I'm in my
car the phone also has a charger so I'm not
really running down the battery a lot during most days. Normal day to day use
compared to my iPhone though with my iPhone 8 Plus, at the end of the day when
I put it on the wireless charger its battery would be around 30%, somewhere in
the 30% range. With the Google Pixel 4 XL, it's battery percentage at the end
of the day when I put it on the charger it's somewhere in the 20% range. Now the
phone is usually gonna last you the entire day, it's just maybe gonna cut it
a little closer than you may want and the quick charge feature helps in case
you need some extra juice fast since Google does include an 18 watt fast
charger with every pixel. Another downside to the phone is clicking on
notifications. I run into this issue on occasion where I'll click on a
notification and it'll either never actually bring me into the app that sent
the notification or it'll just take a long time to actually load the app, which
has been kind of frustrating. Another frustration we've had with this phone
has been trying to find a solution to wirelessly get files off of the phone to
my Mac. Now there are some apps out there that can do this but they're much more
clunky than the air drop functionality I'm used to coming over from iOS. Another
slight disappointment with this phone has been with the video recording
capability. You can't do 4k at 60 frames per second I've also found that the
colors don't look quite as good as what I'm used to with Apple's 4k video
recording capabilities, however the stabilization for the video though is
quite good. Alright so those were some of the things that I don't like about the
phone, now let's move into some of the things that I think we're really
overblown with this phone when it first came out and first let's talk about
build quality. The build quality is fine for a phone of this price and in my
opinion most people are gonna look at the build quality right when they open
the phone and then after of minutes they're gonna put a case on
it anyways. Another part of the build quality people overreacted to is the top
chin, it's fine and you're not going to notice it any more than you'd notice an
ugly notch protruding in on your screen space. As you can tell, I dislike notches.
Now there's a reason for the chin, it's there to house the face unlock sensors
as well as the soli radar chip, which assists in the sheer speed of Google's
face unlock. Now the last overreaction that will lead into some of my
recommendations about this device has to do with pricing. People freaked out over
the pricing of this phone especially when they were doing spec by spec
comparisons between the pixel and other flagship phones out there and I think
it's important to remember not all Android phones and not all flagships are
created equal. The experience of the pixel is heavily reliant on software and
that just isn't reflected in the spec sheet comparison between flagships so
you have to take that into consideration when you compare the Pixel 4 with its
competition. However in a world where Google's successful Pixel 3a phone and
upcoming Pixel 4a tells people that they don't need to spend $1000 on a
phone and can get a $400 phone that meets most of their needs, it does beg
the question why have a pixel flagship at all? That's a valid argument, however
I'd argue that well yes the magic of the pixel is with its software, they're just
some things that you want to do in software that require cutting-edge
hardware, like the soli radar chip for face unlock or a specific processor that
enables the Google Assistant to run locally on the machine. So I think there
is definitely room for a flagship Pixel phone that serves as the cutting edge
vision for what Google thinks a phone should be, showcasing new features and
allowing Google to test things out that'll eventually make it down to
phones that don't cost as much. So in wrapping up this review, my
recommendation would be if you want the latest tech in a Pixel phone go with the
Pixel 4 XL, you'll get better battery life than the Pixel 4 and
compared to a mid-range Pixel you'll get face unlock, the new Google Assistant, a
better screen, faster performance, wireless charging, and a waterproof
enclosure. Now if you don't care as much about those cutting-edge features and
you just want a good phone with a good camera at a reasonable price, then my
advice would be to wait for the Google Pixel 4a to drop, which should have a
similar camera setup to the Pixel 4. Alright, well that will do it for our
6 Months Later review of the Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL. If you like this video,
make sure to hit that thumbs up button below and subscribe to the channel to
see more Google and product review videos like this one. For 6 Months Later,
I'm Josh Teder, thanks for watching.