Google Pixel 4 XL Review: The Ultimate Smartphone Experience By SuperTechMario

Hello everyone. Welcome to Super Tech Mario. Today, we're going to talk about the Pixel 4 and why it’s the last phone you will ever need to buy. This review is based on how the phone performs and operates right now after a year of software updates and when I'm referring to the Pixel 4, I'm only talking about the Pixel 4 XL. Design So the Pixel 4 got a really bad rep for the way it looks and I don't get it. It's got a really playful and unique design and the camera bump is not an eyesore.

The back of the phone has a really clean look and the sides have this really nice and soft texture and they also house amazing clicky buttons. Now let's have a look at the front of the phone. That forehead that everybody loves to diss. To me the Pixel 4 has the best design for the technology that it offers. Let me explain.

You might prefer the look of a punch hole over a bezel but in all honestly, nobody does the punch hole correct at the moment. Some apps will black out the top notification bar essentially creating that very top bezel that people seem to hate. Enter the Pixel and you get a consistent experience throughout Google's UI and the apps with just the top black bezel. The next thing I want to talk about is biometrics. Now before anyone points out that you can't use face unlock right now due to the pandemic.

This review is for the long-term user and hopefully for everyone's sake the pandemic will go away sometime soon. In my opinion, in-display fingerprint sensors are the worst thing to come to the mobile market and again nobody has implemented them right. It takes up a tiny portion of the screen and it's not readily available in every phone. Some phones light it up permanently on the always-on display, which seems to be the ideal solution, but in most cases you have to wave your hand on top of the screen, lift the screen, tap the screen in order for just a fingerprint sensor to appear. After you're done with that you're greeted with a failure rate of at least two out of ten times regardless of which advanced in display fingerprint sensor you use.

All of this just to keep the back of the phone clean of a rear fingerprint sensor, which has been proven to be far more reliable and convenient as your index finger naturally rests on that position. With the Pixel on the other hand, you get the best face unlock implementation and a clean back. What makes it the best is the SOLI radar present in the top bezel which makes the phone aware when you're reaching for it, activating the sensors and instantly unlocking your phone. It works at multiple angles, in the dark, with sunglasses and now supports all of my apps for biometric unlock. So wait.

Before you Apple users call me out and say, oh the iPhone got it right the first time no no no no they didn't and yes I'm talking about the notch. The notch itself is not a bad hardware decision. Apple's bad decisions are usually in software. I get that you want to use face unlock, and face unlock works really well on the iPhone but the main problem here is that Apple refuses to black out the notch which makes no sense as it only houses the signal strength and the time, which would be perfectly visible with the black background. Not to mention that if you keep the notch enabled you just ruin landscape video content consumption Apple is never gonna allow you to blackout the notch so that people know that you own an iPhone One more area where I think Google got it right are the dimensions, weight distribution and aspect ratio of the screen.

The iPhone's are too wide and too heavy, most Android phones have now gotten way too narrow and too tall but to me the Pixel 4 just has the perfect balance. Feels nice in the hand. Display The display on the Pixel is one of the best I've seen to date. It's the only IP water and dust resistant phone that has both the Quad HD resolution and 90hz refresh rate enabled at the same time and the difference between 60 and 90hz is far greater than going from 90 to 120. You're not just going to be mindlessly scrolling through Chrome to check oh yeah, it scrolls faster no, you’re not.

In everyday experience, 90hz feels just as smooth as 120 and it's a major upgrade over 60. As for brightness, well Google implemented a sunlight boost feature when you have the display set to adaptive which basically makes your display perfectly visible in direct sunlight. Are there brighter displays after, yes, should you care? No. Regardless of how bright your display is, content consumption will always be better if you're in the shade or indoors. The display is also very well calibrated with very accurate color representation and a pixel density of 537 pixels per inch.

That's again one of the highest in the industry and even if you find a phone with a higher pixel density I doubt you'll be able to see the difference. Oh and the display is flat and curved panels need to go away. And the same goes for the notch by the way. You do not need accidental touches and off axis colour discolouration on a device you use every single day Battery Ok people, not everybody wants a super thick and large phone and battery optimization really comes into play when talking battery life. For its size, the Pixel’s battery is actually really good.

You will get a day of usage and in the worst case scenario you turn on battery saver. Start using wireless charging. If you incorporate wireless charging into your lifestyle you realize that the phone never actually dies. I've had the phone for a year and I've never been able to kill it. Although I did get it to 1% and I was happily surprised that that 1% is actually insane in battery management.

Another cool feature is that if you decide to turn off the always on display to get battery performance, if you're using a Pixel stand that always on display will actually turn on when you place it on the charger. Therefore, you still get the wireless charging going and all your information whether it’s notifications, time and weather present in an upright position. Performance Yes it only has 6 gigabytes of RAM, a Snapdragon 855 and a max of 128 gigabytes of storage which is the variant I would suggest you go for. It makes up for it though, by offering the cleanest and most optimized UI available. The Snapdragon 855 is an amazing chip based on the seven nanometer process and it won’t show its age anytime soon.

It's also the first chip that Qualcomm has added support for GPU driver updates and the Pixel 4 will be the first phone to get them when they arrive. This should future-proof all your gaming and performance needs. At the moment, the hardest gaming test is GameCube and Wii emulation and I can confirm that the Pixel 4 by using the dolphin MMJ emulator can play all optimized titles at full HD at max FPS. As for everyday tasks, scrolling through social media, browsing the web, the Pixel just flies. I’ve used other phones with the Snapdragon 865 and they still sometimes lose in app launching speeds to the Pixel.

Moving on to the RAM, 6 gigs is all Android needs to perform like a champ. If you want to use a pro app on the phone, the Pixel will definitely get the job done. PowerDirector renders videos insanely fast so you shouldn't care if your phone reloads an app you opened six hours ago. If you take a 10 year old i7 processor, eight gigs of RAM and a solid state drive a Windows 10 PC or laptop with those specs will still perform great to this day for everyday tasks. We have reached that point of stability with Android and yeah having more specs is nice but I would take the pixel experience over specs, every time.

Camera The pixel has the most consistent and reliable camera that captures shots with accurate color representation, lots of detail and dynamic range. You can get amazing bokeh and night mode shots without any hassle. The two keywords here are reliable and consistent. This is a smartphone. Not a professional camera.

Yes, you can get better results with other phones every now and then but that's not the point. You can confidently store your everyday shots and memories with this camera. As for video again, it's fine for your everyday needs. You're able to shoot 4K at 30FPS with great stabilization and able to switch between the telephoto and the normal wide lens. And now the one thing Google actually dropped the ball on and it is the lack of a wide angle camera.

There is a way to get ultra white shots through the photosphere menu in the Google app but with the Pixel 3 they introduced this software feature called SuperZoom which basically made zoomed in shots with the normal lens look really great and sometimes even better than the competition. It would’ve made sense that since they only wanted to add a second lens that they would have added an ultra wide, therefore you would have all three fields of view to work with. But they didn't. To be honest I don't consider this to be a deal breaker, but it's just a shame that they left it out. And this is just the ultimate noobs camera.

Extras The default experience you get out of the phone matters. I know people like to customize the crap out of Android and I was one of them but Google's apps in UI is what makes this phone so great. Why spend all your time replacing all the stock apps from other phones with Google apps trying to get it to feel and look like a Pixel when you can just purchase the Pixel in the first place. Haptics which is another area where the Pixel blows the competition out of the water. Not only because the feedback is great, but because of how implemented it is throughout the whole OS you get haptic feedback when you squeeze the phone to activate the Google Assistant you get feedback when the face on unlock activates.

The typing on this thing is amazing. The speakers are really rich and full and even have some low end with great stereo separation. The dialer app which actually lets you search for nearby services instead of having to go to Google Maps every single time. Then we have the amazing real-time transcription of the voice recorder and the not so great air gestures. Yeah, we're not going to talk about those.

Pixel 4 goes regularly on sale on the Google store and all major online retailers. With the Pixel 5 around the corner, you might be wondering why you should purchase the Pixel 4 Spoiler alert, the Pixel 4 will still be the best that Google has to offer for another year at the very least. It's been the best phone experience I've had to date and I couldn't recommend it enough. Thank you guys for watching. This was Super Tech Mario like and subscribe and I'll see you in the next one.

Source : SuperTechMario