Pixel 4 user review by a Pixel 3 user: the Good and the Bad!!

Pixel 4 user review by a Pixel 3 user: the Good and the Bad!!

Friday Jan 3, 2020: Hello everyone, I have been a pixel fan from long time. I'm fan for many reasons out of which camera, software experience, build quality are there commonly spoken features. These features stand out very well when compared to other flagships. I'm amused by the performance of this year's Apple flagship and strongly believe they are the only one who reads user feedback and make changes but I'm still not satisfied with the same design repeating over years. My belief is to not change phone when it looks the same for some minor camera improvements.

Over the last year's Pixel 3 this year's Google flagship is a lot better in few categories and worse in some categories. 

Improvements observed: 

1. Display: 

It is is the most widely spoken aspect of this phone as this year's model came out with 90Hz display called as fluid display. I like it because it makes me feel the software experience much smoother than it is. When I'm playing games I can clearly see the animations and transitions happening very smoothly. 

2. Camera: 

This is the other aspect which I can only mention about the Astrophotography. Rest of the camera is the same as Pixel phones starting from Pixel 3 are always great in camera. You will only observe this when moving from a non Pixel flagships or not a iPhone 11 Pro owner. Here's my attempt at regular camera and Astrophotography on a cloudy day. I wish I could get a better shot by going somewhere really dark. But I didn't get time to do it.

First picture took about 1:30 mins. Second one about 4 minutes

3. Performance: 

I can absolutely say that SD 855 works like a gem when doing heavy tasks such as gaming. The increased RAM of 6gb also helps in performing faster. I play Pubg on phone. I used to always choose my spare iPhone X to play instead of Pixel 3. But now I can easily play on Pixel 4 as the experience is same. I accept Apple phones are lot faster but just like the Earth is round my brain always tilts towards Android. 

4. Face unlock:  

This is amazingly faster than iPhone. But the thing is you will not see the actual speed of it in your early days. I thought it is not that fast in my initial days but I believe it learns your face over the attempts and improves the Algorithm. I strongly need Google to implement the face unlock only when the eyes are open. I am waiting for the software update they promised. 

Drawbacks over Pixel 3: 

1. Battery: 

I'm not sure why Google doesn't want to increase the capacity of the battery in the phone. Also, with the addition of high power using Soli radars, IR cameras for face unlock and always on radar chips to make the have unlock faster. They should've at least increased the battery to 3500 mAh. Instead they have reduced it from the previous year model. The phone is already lighter and customers doesn't mind adding few more grams for more hours of battery. Here's a glimpse of battery drainage for a nominal use of my phone captured today.

Glimpse of battery drainage is as follows:

07:51 - 97% - Boarded on to Bart train in California
08:00 - 94% - On a call from the time I boarded
09:15 - 77% - watched a couple of youtube videos (5 min length) & 10 mins of continuous chatting
10:50 - 62% - Phone was idle for an hour before, Not sure what used the battery
11:45 - 44% - wrote down this blog and watched youtube for around 10-15 mins

Over the last 5 hours I haven't used my phone much. I took about 2-3 pictures, watched around 15 mins of YouTube, I was on a call for 10 mins and video call for 10 mins. I only used it in last one hour heavily where I'm writing this blog post and lost about 20% in last one hour of heavy usage. This makes the customers to have a battery power bank with me all the time or buy a battery case. 

2. Volume buttons: 

I mentioned only volume buttons because there build quality except volume buttons is absolutely fine. Somehow I'm not convinced over the last year's volume buttons. 

3. Speakers: 

I believe when Google doesn't want to sacrifice their display and include a whole set of radars and cameras they could've also included front facing speakers on the bottom by making customers sacrifice a little more borders on bottom. The speakers on Pixel 3 are excellent. I used to get lot of praises for the volume and sound effects. I don't complain much but I believe pixel 3 speakers are far better than this down facing speakers. I tend to block them in rare scenarios. 

These are my observations after using the phone for more than a month. 

Please let me know your comments below and follow for more updates. 

Thank you.