22 13 - 26 November 2019
T
he first thing you notice
when you pull the Pixel
4 out of its box is its
updated design. Google has
ditched the two-tone look of
its previous three generations
and instead opted for a
simpler single-tone colour
scheme, available in black,
white and orange. Whatever
the colour, the phone is
surrounded by a softly-
curved textured black trim,
with a coloured power
button and volume rocker
on the right edge. There’s no
notch on the screen, but the
selfie camera and earpiece
speaker are located inside a
chunky top bezel.
Elsewhere, the Pixel 4 is
sandwiched between
protective layers of Gorilla
Glass. The new rear camera
module is square and
distinctly iPhone-like, with
the two cameras, infrared
sensor and dual-LED flash
arranged in a diamond.
It has dual front-facing
speakers but there’s still no
3.5mm headphone jack.
Sadly, Google hasn’t included
an adapter in the box, either.
There’s no fingerprint sensor
but you can unlock the Pixel
4 using your face or with a
PIN or pattern lock.
The screen is 5.7in from
corner to corner, with a new
refresh rate of 90Hz. In
technical testing, we
measured peak screen
brightness at 430cd/m^2
(candles per square metre) in
automatic brightness mode,
promising readability in mostGoogle Pixel 4
sunny environments in the
UK. The screen’s sRGB
coverage in the phone’s
‘Natural’ colour mode is at
90.5%, which is very good.
Inside the Pixel 4, you’ll find
a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855
processor and 6GB of
memory. Both the Pixel 4 andWith an extra camera, new design and radar-sensing abilities, is
Google’s new flagship model now the best smartphone around?
Product Test
We test and compare the latest products
4 XL come with either 64GB
or 128GB of internal storage,
but it’s worth noting, you
can’t expand this via microSD.
Unsurprisingly, this
hardware combo delivers
barnstorming benchmark
results and offers a slick,
responsive experience allaround. In our Geekbench 4
test, the Pixel 4 performed
better than its predecessor
and matches the Galaxy S10’s
Exynos 9820 chipset in
multi-core performance. It’s a
similar story for gaming and
graphics performance, with
the embedded Adreno 640
GPU delivering a higher
framerate than the Galaxy S10
and iPhone 11 in the
GFXBench on-screen
Manhattan 3.0 test.
Unfortunately, the Pixel’s
battery lasted a mere 12 hours
and 7 minutes in our
standardised video rundown
test. Looking at the numbers,
that’s slightly worse than the
Pixel 3’s result from last year,
and is miles off the Galaxy S10
and iPhone 11. This is a phone
that might just about make it
through a day on a single
charge, but you’ll have to be
very conservative with what
you do with it. Most high-
priced phones reach at least
20 hours under the same
conditions.New features
Arguably the most intriguing
new feature is the Pixel 4’s
system of gesture-based
controls. It essentially uses a
motion-sensing radar,
powered by a small custom
chip embedded into the
handset itself, which detects
motion around the phone.
Previous phones claiming
similar functions have used
the front-mounted camera to
detect movement, but this
new radar chip lets you