Google Pixel 4 has been crowned the most leaked smartphone to date and well, you need to backtrack to June to know how it all started. Google itself outed what the Pixel 4 would look like four months ago and well, everything about this flagship phone leaked online in the time leading up to today’s announcement.
Google officially launched the Pixel 4 and 4 XL at the Made by Google hardware event in New York today, basically confirming every hardware spec and feature about its flagship including the price and availability. If you want to know every small detail about Pixel 4 lineup, then look no further as we have listed the entire specs sheet and feature set for both variants down below:
Google Pixel 4: Specs and Features
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No Dual-tone Design
With the Pixel 4 lineup, Google is making a significant change in the design front and is swapping out the signature ‘dual-tone’ back panel finish. Both the Pixel 4 and 4 XL now feature a single-color glass panel with a matte finish, along with a black colored square camera bump and edge grip.
Another important design decision that I appreciate is that Google is not discriminating between Pixel 4 and the bigger Pixel 4 XL. Both now sport the same curves, same front display panels (except for a difference in resolution, more on this below), and the same back panel design.
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90Hz Display FTW
Well, the leaks and hands-on videos were indeed true. The Google Pixel 4 and 4 XL are equipped with a 5.7-inch Full-HD+ and 6.3-inch Quad-HD+ display respectively. Both the display panels feature a higher 90Hz refresh rate, which has gotten popular of recent – especially since the launch of OnePlus 7 Pro. We don’t know the display specs, however, we will update this story with more information very soon.
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Under the Hood – More RAM?
The Pixel 4 lineup is powered by the Snapdragon 855 chipset and well, Google seems to have finally listened to the influx of memory management complaints on Pixel 3 phones. You’re now getting 6GB of RAM on both the Pixel 4 and 4 XL instead of 4GB of RAM that we’ve seen on its predecessor. While this sounds great, it’s disappointing to see that the base storage is still stuck at 64GB and only goes up to 128GB – that too at a time when flagship phones are offering 1TB onboard storage.
In addition, Google Pixel 4 now also comes equipped with a new Pixel Neural Core chip which will enable this flagship to handle the machine learning and computational tasks, which are core to this smartphone’s experience.
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More Than One Camera, Finally!
Google has been baking just one rear camera sensor on its Pixel smartphone until date, however, the Pixel 4 finally take a step forward. Pixel 4 is the first Pixel smartphone to sport a dual rear-camera setup. It includes a 12MP primary camera lens, paired with a 16MP telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom and up to 8x hybrid zoom (with Pixel 4’s well-known SuperRes feature).
New computational features baked into the Pixel 4 are Live HDR (which will show how a scene would look like after HDR processing in the viewfinder), dual exposure controls (it was leaked before and well, gives you control over brightness and shadow of the scenes before clicking a picture), improved white balance to better handle colors in your photos (using machine learning and semantic segmenting).
That’s not all. Google Pixel 4 comes with a better portrait camera to offer better life-like bokeh and well, let’s not forget the Astrophotography mode. It’s one of the new features we’ve already experienced with the leaked Google Camera 7.0 and it takes a longer 15-second exposure to click pictures that look like the Milky Way.
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3D Face Unlock
Another highlight feature of the Pixel 4 lineup will have to be Face Unlock. And well, it might come as a surprise to many but Google seems to have taken cues from Apple to solely bake Face Unlock into its latest flagship for biometric authentication. This means you’ll not find a fingerprint sensor on this flagship – neither a physical nor an in-display one.
As you can see in the image above, the taller top bezel in the Pixel 4 and 4 XL includes Face Unlock hardware. It looks pretty similar to Apple’s Face ID hardware and you find components including Face Unlock IR camera, flood illuminator, and dot projector. All of these work together to make Pixel 4’s Face Unlock feature snappier and comparable to iPhones.
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Motion Gestures
Pixel 4 is the “first smartphone to feature a radar sensor” called the Soli radar chip. This makes it possible for users to wave their hand over the Pixel 4 to change tracks, control playback, silent incoming calls, snooze alarms, and more. The device also uses this Soli radar chip to detect when your hand is close to the phone to wake the screen and get it ready for Face Unlock. It will also lock the phone when you walk away, which surely is a great feature.
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Software Upgrades
While the OnePlus 7T lineup may be the first couple of devices to launch with the latest Android 10 software experience out-of-the-box, the Pixel 4 and 4 XL too comes with the same – obviously. We are talking about a Google-made smartphone here, so you do get exclusive software features like the new Google Assistant experience that’s super fast. I mean, it uses a hybrid approach to deliver results faster than ever before.
Also, Google has baked a new voice recorder app into the Pixel 4 and it’s pretty awesome as it not only saves recordings but also gives you text transcriptions in real-time. And the best part is that it works offline and you can even search for certain parts of the text you said in one of the recordings.
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Battery+Charging
The smaller Pixel 4 houses a measly 2,800mAh battery whereas the Pixel 4 XL houses a bigger 3,700mAh battery and well, those battery packs still seem less for 90Hz displays that are baked into these smartphones. Google, however, says the device automatically adjusts the refresh rate of the display to preserve battery life.
Google Pixel 4: Price and Availability
Google Pixel 4 has been priced starting at $799 in the U.S whereas Pixel 4 XL will start retailing at $899 for the 6GB RAM and 64GB storage variant. You will have to spend an additional $100 to grab the higher-end 6GB+128GB variant for both Pixel 4 and 4 XL.
I believe you already know the color variants for the Pixel 4 lineup as they have leaked extensively before launch. You can choose between Clearly White, Just Black or Oh So Orange (which doesn’t look that bad) limited edition color variant.
Since the Pixel 4 lineup will go up against the iPhone 11 and its Pro variant, Google has priced its latest flagship phone quite aggressively when you account for the boatload of features packed into the smartphone. It would be interesting to see how the camera on Pixel 4 compares to the iPhone 11 Pro since the latter has been widely praised by many. Who do you think would be the winner? Share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.
