I shot an unboxing video when the pixel four and the four XL first arrived in
the office here and it's fair to say I was a bit disappointed by what we had
I've spent the last month or so making myself use the pixel for every single
day as my main phone and I'm afraid to say that a month on made really is the
operative word I don't hate this phone by any means but after a month of using
it I don't love it any more than I first did and this still really feels like a
big disappointment and a misstep from Google here's why she's pretty rare that
a battery is the thing I most want to talk about when I'm reviewing a phone
but it's kind of hard to ignore when it comes to the pixel for especially with
this which is the the smaller regular model not the XL with a less than 3000
milliamp hour capacity I'm still only 3,700 in the bigger phone that's just
not enough and it never looked like enough on paper and then when I first
used the phone for my initial review for a few days I felt like it wasn't enough
the battery was honestly the main reason I wanted to shoot a month on a review
video in the first place because while that 2,800 milliamp hour capacities
seemed really small at first I wanted to give Google the benefit of the doubt and
hope that it's adaptive battery tech would save the day basically it claims
that it will manage your battery usage throttling and turning off apps that you
don't use very much while leaving in that other extra battery power for the
stuff that you use all the time and yet it kind of worked I think the battery
life has been better a month in I feel like I'm getting an extra half an hour
an extra hour each day which is a big improvement from what I was getting
before but it's just still not enough it's still the case that the phone tends
to die about 11 p.m. every night or at least it's getting very close to dying
by that point I'm hitting single digits guaranteed at some point in the day and
when I went traveling using the phone all day to take photos check Google Maps
book Hoover's that kind of thing fourth the battery just went I had to
top out every single option in without fail or it would have died before I even
made it to dinner and that's just not good enough from a flagship in 2019 now
if you've got the four XL the bigger model that's definitely less of a
problem it's still not a phenomenal battery life but it will be enough to
get you through the day most days and on the smaller pixel for that just isn't
the case now yeah there's 18 what fast and there's wireless charging so it is
easy to keep the top top so if you just need to sort of plug it in for 20
minutes in the afternoon you'll get a decent amount of battery back from that
which does mitigate the problem slightly so if you're just happy with the idea
that you'll have to remember most afternoons to plug it in for a little
bit then it's fine you'll be ok with that for me I don't like those
compromises I don't want to be worrying about my battery all the time I just
think that when you're spending this much on a phone having to have battery
life anxiety just doesn't make sense in 2019 you could buy a phone for half the
price with basically double the battery capacity the pixel 4 is a small phone
it's a slim phone you could make this thing bigger there's just no reason it
couldn't be bigger still I guess that would compromise one of the things I do
like about it which is the design I know it's been a little bit controversial
known everyone loves it but I'm a fan of how the pixel four looks there's a lot
about that design to like I really like how simple and sort of sparse the back
is you get a good sense of that and this sort of glossy black finish but I
actually think the matte orange and white look a lot better they really pop
they're really distinctive and it means that black camera cutter really stands
out and contrasts against the rest of it you obviously still get that kind of
color contrasting power button one of my favorite little pixel touches and I'm
really glad to see it's still there especially against this new sort of
black matte plastic heat bezels a lot of people I've spoken to uh said they don't
like it they find the fact it's kind of grippy and plastic he makes the phone
feel cheap to them I'm actually a really big fan though it helps me keep a good
grip almost otherwise just a slab of glass I also feel like it echos the kind
of design language you see for him saying Nintendo where it does feel kind
of toy like but that's no bad thing the downside of all that is the front I
mean we've got omit that in the year when like you can get totally full
screen displays on a phone having this massive bezel at the top is a big
downside especially when there's still a bit of a bezel at the bottom the the
sort of asymmetry of it bothers me a little bit it's better than the pixel
three excels horrible knotch which was a one
the absolute worst and I will say as someone who normally uses the 1 + 7 Pro
it is a relief every time I go back to that phone get it out the drawer to test
something and I get that screen going all the way up to the top
I do missed that with a pixel for it doesn't help that a big part of the
reason for having that big bezel at the top is because it packs in or the motion
sent stack which well I could really do without it's cool it works but it's
completely unnecessary so yeah it will help you face on up the phone a tiny bit
quicker when you pick it up great I not even sure I could tell the difference to
be honest and Apple already does that with an accelerometer and it works fine
and doesn't need all that chunky bezel space you can you know wave at Pikachu
on the wallpaper fun I love it I've got the Pikachu wallpaper completely
unnecessary and actually the sort of actual motion controls like waving your
hand to silence an alarm or skip tracks I never use some people might I guess if
you're cooking or something but knowing times out of 10 you're still gonna be
better off just using the touchscreen and I don't really feel these are better
or more reliable or faster in any significant way than LG's camera based
implementation in the g8 yeah it's a little bit better but not enough to
actually make me every use it of course the other thing that that big chunky top
bezel contributes to is the biometric stuff the face unlock there's a lot more
tech in there than just a camera and that's part of what's useful what is a
genuinely very secure very impressive face unlock system comparable to what
Apple offers there is one obvious downside which is it works when your
eyes are shut I can't believe Google let that in I know they said it's probably
going to get patched but it is still wild but anyone could point my phone at
my face while I'm asleep and get into it if that gets fixed when that gets fixed
this will be a great system though downside is I do still miss the
fingerprint sensor every now and then the face on what doesn't work for some
reason and then I'm stuck putting my pen in and I miss having a fingerprint
sensor as a backup for exactly that situation that's especially shame
because while putting one in on the back would have disrupted that nice sweet
unbroken finish in screen tech is mostly good enough now
that they I feel like they could have fit one into the display and that
would've been the life thing I appreciate that could have driven the
price up and maybe not enough people would have gotten use out of it
especially with the really genuinely very fast face unlock there but for me
giving up on a fingerprint entirely isn't where I want to be right now so
there are a couple other big new things that are totally new to the pixel for
one is the 90 Hertz smooth display I mean I say it's you to the pixel for is
new for the pixel series this isn't the first phone with a 90 years display you
can even get ones with a faster 120 Hertz display but still the 90 helps
refresh rate is really really lovely it's one of my favorite things about
this phone even if I know sometimes it doesn't run all the time and it's
triggered by brightness when it turns on and off but that kind of makes sense
because I love brightness I can't tell if it's on or off anyway that's the
whole point and I wouldn't want it on all the time because that would make the
battery life even worse than it is I appreciate that where I'm in a nice
bright condition when the brightness is turned up animations and this thing look
really really beautiful it's really fluid it's really nice to use ninety
hurt is one of the biggest upgrades you can get in a flagship at the moment it's
one of my favorite thing that's been rolling out across more and more brands
it's very hard to describe it's very hard to show on video when you use it it
is hard to go back and it's great the Google house packed back into the pixel
for it's part of what makes this display really really lovely I just wish it was
a display packed into a phone that as a whole I loved more the other big new
thing here that I haven't thought about yet is the new Google assistant that's
because I don't use it that's because I can't use it we've got a whole video
dedicated to helping you set up the Google assistant on the phone in case
you don't have the new one because if you're like me you might set the pixel
for up and find out that the new assistant isn't even there that's
because in addition to using gesture controls which I do you also need to set
the assistant language to us English rather than my normal UK English and
worst of all you have to log out of any G suite accounts for me that just isn't
an option I use G suite for work and it is wild but one of the headline features
in this new phone one of the most talented things not only isn't available
UK English oh that is understandable and it were
all out eventually but it's not compatible with Google's massive b2b
product it's like huge work suite that so many people use and if you have a G
suite account on your phone that you use for your work email address or anything
like that you just can't get the new assistant for me I have to make the
choice between accessing my work emails literally and necessary part of my job
or having a slightly faster assistant and yet the assistant lost out it is
good it is faster it is cool having continued conversation is great not
enough to justify the fact that is basically broken in its current
implementation and the thing that you might argue should be first for a pixel
but I think it's telling for the four that it's the last thing I want to talk
about if the camera so pixel phones have always been on for the cameras that's
been the thing that Google has pushed computational photography is something
that it's really thrown into the limelight as a company and it's made a
big fuss in the past about how it can do with software what everyone else throws
four lenses up that's why it was a big deal that it threw our second lens into
the pixel for a telephoto lens what disappointing is actually the telephoto
lens is yeah it's there it's fine it's good it gives you a roughly two times
optical zoom and then there's all sorts of digital zoom stuff going on beyond
that computational photography again that gives you much better results on
that up to eight times it and it is really impressive well it's a shame is
it's not better than what other people are doing
in what way is p30 range and in the oppor we know 10 times zoom there's
similar tech going on and these other companies are doing it just as well as
Google if not better plus they're actually throwing in more powerful sort
of optical zoom Hardware as a starting point to get even better results so yeah
the telephoto is nicer but it's by no means the best around it doesn't help
that the color consistency just isn't there between the two lenses when you
shift between the main so shooting with mainland's and shooting with the combo
of the main lens and the telephoto you will see that the exposure is different
the HDR effects are different you'll get different tones to the photos you take
other than that the camera is great I mean it's phenomenal
it's a pixel camera of course it's great it's still one of the best on them
Adam from the channel just did a big camera comparison with the pixel for
weighing it up against the iPhone 11 pro and the Galaxy Note 10 and while weighs
P 30 Pro from earlier this year the pixel foot didn't come out on top though
but it did do very well it's still a phenomenal camera even without even with
the fact that I think the telephoto underperforms just a little bit the big
addition for me is the dual exposure sliders that let you adjust the exposure
parts of the image separately which lets you get some really nice effect balance
stuff out sometimes better than what the AI does by itself and also get some
artistic finishes to stuff that the algorithm just doesn't know you might
want portrait mode is still here still phenomenal still for my money the best
portrait mode on the market night sights still here still phenomenal still
potentially the best night mode on the market though the competitions really
caught up there it's also after a photography mode that has been hyped a
lot by Google it's telling that in a month with the phone I haven't used it
once that's not actually for lack of trying it's just I live in central
London the light pollution is real guys I cannot get a single shot of the night
sky without light flowing up from the city clouds covering the whole way I
don't see stars I never see stars this phone won't help with that but if you
live out in the countryside or just somewhere that's not quite as bad as
London it's a cool mode but it is something you're probably gonna use once
or twice and never again unless you are a photographer who's really focused on
that kind of stuff finally the other bigger mission that people have talked a
lot about is video I don't personally shoot a lot of video with a phone but I
think if you do it is gonna be a real downside that the pixel 4 just can't
compete with others in terms of the frame rates it handles the slow-mo it
offers I think 4k well this is not a video from it would do what you need for
snaps you out of a video chair for stuff like that but if you want to actually
record really beautiful professional-looking video footage this
isn't the right phone for that and it's a shame I think it's something Googler
we're really gonna have to push on next year and catch up on because other
brands Apple and Samsung have both made really big pushes into the quality of
their video footage with their cameras and Google right now is lagging very far
behind it's a very competent phone in a lot of
ways it's an incredibly incompetent phone in a lot of other ways it's made
some advancements in camera but not enough to match the fact that everyone
else in the industry is chasing Google as fast as they can and have caught up
or gone past them in a few key areas and it all just comes down to me into that
battery life it's just not good enough and I cannot recommend that anyone buy a
phone for seven hundred pounds eight hundred dollars that cannot last a
single full day on one charge so yeah a month in I still don't know the pixel
for but hey you might we've got a pixel for tips and tricks videos where I show
you how to make the most of the phone if you have bought one and if you are a fan
of it otherwise like subscribe hit the notification bell you know the drill
we've got more stuff coming so stay tuned