Anyone interested in a Pixel 4 review? OK
I've had it over a month now, and I've seen some mixed reviews, so here's mine.
Yeah, it's good.
OK, it's good but there's a learning curve - one of the reasons I'm posting this.
Getting used to it (from a Pixel 2) was a surprisingly bumpy process. One thing which is in my book a retrograde step is the removal of the fingerprint sensor and move to face ID, which is not supported by many apps. Turns out to be not quite as much hassle as I thought it was going to be, but the default behaviour of face unlock to the main screen is crazy. Far better is the easily selectable "unlock to lock screen" where you can choose what to do - read alerts, go to apps etc. Otherwise, you are forever unlocking and activating stuff you don't want.
Another big change which you don't have to go with is the move to gesture control from the trad buttons at the bottom. I have done, and it was worth it. Again a learning curve where you don't see the point in the first instance but actually, once over that hurdle the gesture controls work much better - for example the back swipe is anywhere on either side edge. The only slightly retrograde item with gestures is invoking the android split screen but, how many times do you ever use that? I know I do occasionally but I don't suppose many know it even exists and all other phone users get by without it, including those fruity boys. (for those who don't know what I am talking about, Google phones have long been able to have two apps on screen at once)
One of the main gripes you read about is the battery. There are a lot of reviews saying Arrgh! battery is only 2800mAh! Too small! Doesn't perform well in battery drain tests! Well, I dunno, for me it isn't a problem. I use my phone throughout the day, and the battery lasts better than my old Pixel 2, 24 hours of light usage is around 20% used, my normal day which includes browsing, whatsapp, playing stuff on the speakers (which are surprisingly good) is 60-70%. Life may be different if you have a lot of apps doing background push, and I keep my brightness down below 75% (which is where the 90hz oh-so-slinky refresh cuts in) and the fast charge pushes about 50% of charge in 30 minutes. I put my phone on charge in the morning rather than leave it all night - came off charge at around 8 this morning and is currently sitting on 84% at 22:00. I've had a couple of calls on it, looked at it occasionally but not done much on it. Basically, this phone has serious smarts around battery usage.
The camera holds its own against anything out there, and the night sky mode is downright creepy - you wibble about while the phone takes a multi second exposure and the image turns out rock steady. The motion sense feature seemed like a total gimmick, but actually muting as you pick your phone up to answer or switch off an alarm is quite cute. There's a bunch of other stuff that I really would benefit finding out about, if anything that's one of the major issues, there is no real "howto", maybe because there is some much difference between people's preferences and the Pixel is so configurable.
Finally, it needs to be remembered that the flagship phones which the Pixel is compared to (rightly so) cost at least 50% more. For me, that's Google getting back to the old Nexus philosophy. Would it be worth upgrading from a 2 if you don't have to? Probably not, but you wouldn't regret it. As I've never had a 3, I can't comment on that, but I suspect it is similar.
