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The Pixel 4 XL.
Ron Amadeo
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We have the white version, which looks great with contrasting black accents.
Ron Amadeo
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The top of the phone. There is a lot of bevel here.
Ron Amadeo
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Under the right lighting conditions, you can begin to make out the hidden components here. Most cutouts are for the 3D face unlock system.
Ron Amadeo
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Does the screen look … somewhat pink? That is the display mode of the ambient equalizer in action.
Ron Amadeo
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Google’s camera block has two cameras: a 12MP main camera and a 16MP telephoto lens.
Ron Amadeo
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In the correct lighting, the camera block looks like a surprised robot. The two eyes are cameras, the mouth is the LED flash, and a microphone is a little beauty mark on the right. Do you see the sensor on the forehead of the robot? Let’s get closer …
Ron Amadeo
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It is a color sensor! Organized.
Ron Amadeo
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The back is soft to the touch throughout, except for this “G” logo. You can catch a nail on the edge.
Ron Amadeo
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We get a neon orange power button, and in this shot you can see the camera bump.
Ron Amadeo
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There is only a USB-C port, a speaker, and a microphone on the bottom. The grooves are for symmetry only.
Ron Amadeo
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There is only one microphone on top.
Ron Amadeo
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The black sides are metal with a thick coat of paint on top, and there are actually plastic bumpers where the metal meets the two glass panels.
Ron Amadeo
Pixel CEO Mario Queiroz and “the mastermind behind Google’s Pixel camera” Marc Levoy left the Pixel team last year. Both Queiroz and Levoy have been visible members of the Pixel team at launch events, where they often give lengthy presentations on the new features. Levoy, in particular, is cause for concern, as the Pixel’s camera has been one of the main bright spots on the phone line.
The Pixel 4 has not been a great success. It has sold less than the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3a in its first two quarters. Osterloh also did not trust the device in the lead-up to launch. The report says that “before the [Pixel 4] Launching in New York in October, “Osterloh called an all-hands meeting and shared his doubts about the phone. He reportedly” disagreed with some of the decisions made over the phone “and that” in particular, he was Disappointed with his battery power. “Osterloh leads the Pixel team, so this report gives an insight into his management style. For a guy at Steve Jobs, endorsing these kinds of broad directions would be a big part of his decision making. Osterloh, apparently, is more of a hands-free delegate.
The report says that, after “slow sales and lukewarm reviews” for the Pixel 4, “the company’s hardware division needs to maintain favor and funding as top Google executives seek to cut costs due to a recent slowdown in advertising revenue. ” Seeing Google’s hardware in the same sentence as Google’s cost-cutting efforts is a little scary: Google has been aggressively killing products that don’t regularly attract millions of users, and it’s hard to argue that the Pixel line has been working well. or is even improving throughout its four years of existence. We’ve already seen some branches of Google Hardware get the ax: Osterloh has admitted that the team abandoned the tablet business after Pixel Slate’s underperformance.
Right now, all eyes are on the mid-range Pixel 4a, due for release next month. As a cheaper phone, the Pixel 3a was a good seller when it comes to Pixel phones, but it was only Google’s first midrange phone after years of resisting the idea with the claim that “Pixel is still premium “in 2017. For years, the mid-range market was dead, and Google could have had it primarily for itself. However, in 2020, the Pixel 4a will have to do business in a suddenly hyper-competitive mid-range market thanks to the launch of the new iPhone SE.
Regarding the future, the Pixel team is not exactly stopped. A recent Axios report claims that Google is working on its own primary SoC for a future Pixel phone that could hit the market “as soon as next year,” which would mean the Pixel 6. Google has been slowly adding more and more of Its own hardware for the Pixel line, such as the Titan M security chip, the Pixel Visual Core and the Project Soli chip in the Pixel 4, but none of these custom hardware has resulted in a great tangible advantage over its competitors.
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