Google Pixel 4 XL Revisited: Long Term Review By Sid Reviews Tech

Hey how's it going um. This is and um. This is the first time I'm making a tech review. So this is going to be interesting, but today I'm gonna talk about this. The Google Pixel 4 XL, this phone came out two years ago October 2019, and I've been using it for quite a while. So this is going to be more like a long term user experience, review type of thing, so yeah right off the bat.

It's hard to imagine that google makes phones because essentially they're a software company, but they still do make hardware, but it's a known fact that they're not the bestseller. But despite that, the pixel series is my favorite smartphone line. Um, let's find out why, let's start with the least interesting part of this phone, the design. At first glance. This is a very minimalistic, quite simple and quite boring at times piece of hardware in pure pixel fashion.

It does not turn any heads and is not flashy, although this also orange color sure seems like a fashion statement, a bold choice which makes it interesting the smooth, textured matte glass at the back paired with the matte black sides, not only give character to the design of the phone, but also makes it one of the best feeling phones in your hands. You would expect a phone with glass panels on both front and back to be easily breakable, but this phone is surprisingly quite durable and has actually survived some heavy drops without even a single dent on the sides. The front of the phone, however, is not nearly as interesting as the back of the phone, mainly because of that top huge bezel from yesteryear. Well, personally, I don't really mind it all that much I'd rather take a bezel than a notch or even a hole, punch camera. But why is the bezel so significantly massive? You asked the reason is that it holds not just the 8 megapixel front camera, but also the sole radar chip paired with a couple of infrared sensors to enable face ID which I'll talk more about later.

But it also enables motion sense, which was supposed to be this huge feature, but failed terribly because of how inefficient it seemed to be and how it just didn't work most of the time and all. However, I can't really pass any judgment on that, because I've never really used that feature, because it's not supported in my country. But let's talk about the component that comes below the bezel the display. This phone has a gorgeous Beau LED display, which holds up extremely well even in 2021. This was one of the first mainstream phones to adapt to a higher refresh rate display with a refresh rate of 90 hertz, which might have been taken over the 120 hertz right now, but at the time made, it feels like a very snappy and smooth experience.

It was, unlike anything you had seen before on a phone. The colors are very natural and realistic, and the display is very vibrant. The display was named the best display of 2019, and I can see why that was because it's just a joy to use my only complaint with this display would be that it doesn't get very bright with a brightness of just 444, nits and so using its outdoors under direct sunlight can feel frustrating at times, but that's just about the only real criticism I have. This was the last phone that google made, which had flagship level for specifications because, with the pixel 5 google changed their strategy and made it an upper mid-range phone. The Pixel 4 XL, on the other hand, has a snapdragon 855 processors, with 6 GB ram, which is surprisingly still holding up really well even today.

On paper, this performs even better than the newer pixel 5 because of the superior processor games run really well and there is no real lag or hiccups in the performance that is significantly noticeable. Battery performance, however, is not nearly as impressive as the actual performance of this phone, because with a 3700 William hour battery, it just doesn't give the phone enough juice to last for extended periods of time. At best, I get about four to five hours of screen on time it barely lasts through an entire day, which is not really a problem right now, considering that we live in the middle of a pandemic, and we're staying at home, so I have access to a charger at all times. Coming back to the performance. I compared this with my friends, Poco x3 pro, which came out very recently, and the Pixel 4 XL still manages to load apps a tad bit faster than the polo, despite it having a superior processor and just better internals overall, which brings me to the next segment of our video, the software.

Perhaps the most interesting part about this phone. Google has on multiple occasions, showcased how software is indeed the most interesting part about a phone being a software company. Naturally, this is the best part about this phone Pixel 4 XL, initially launched with android 10, now runs android 11, and I just have to say that the stock experience is arguably the best experience you can find anywhere yet. But that's not all your initial impressions of the software may be that it's quite simplistic and there's not much going on, but you're in for a treat. The implementation of the Google Assistant on the phone is quite literally out of this world.

There's a built-in neural core chip inside this phone for built-in smooth Google Assistant features that honestly feels like magic. The battery life is made better with adaptive battery, which has actually increased the longevity of the battery rather than decreasing it another area which the software continues to improve and impress us is the camera. I had a dream. I could find my way to heaven. You can't talk about a pixel phone and not mention the camera.

After all, the cameras have always been the unique selling point of the pixel 9 on the back of the phone. It has a dual camera setup, one main 12.2 megapixel sensor and a 16 megapixel telephoto camera, yes, not wide angle, telephoto. For some strange reason, Google thought that a telephoto camera is better than an ultra white camera. So, while wide angle can be fun, we think telephoto is more important. Well, honestly, I take telephoto over ultra white too, but why not both speaking of images, this phone really knocks it out of the park with this one punchy images, great contrast and an amazing dynamic range, really add depth to these pictures.

All shots look perfect, and this camera is just so reliable that you can just take a random shot anywhere and just know that the final image is just going to be extremely impressive. Google does this with underwhelming camera hardware, so the camera performance is obviously also enhanced enormously by the software, which just blows my mind away. The night sight feature which, which was introduced with the pixel 3 in 2018, was nothing short of magical, and it's only gotten better now and with the new macrophotography feature, the night shots are just nuts. I compared this with the relatively newer iPhone 12 Pro max, which came out just a few months ago, and while the difference is not very noticeable, the iPhone performs better in some areas. However, in most cases, the pixel 4 manages to beat the iPhone, which is highly impressive, considering the fact that the two phones came out one year apart from each other.

One part where the pixel falls short, though, is the video, and it's not even close, the iPhone completely demolishes the pixel here, and it's sad how google has made little to no effort to improve the video quality in this one. Fortunately, the newer, pixel 5 does have improved video performance, though, which can put up a more fair fight with the iPhone, but it's no surprise that the iPhone can still take better videos in the pixel 5 as well. The selfie camera is equally impressive as that rear camera, with amazing details and well saturated colors long story short. The cameras on this thing are nothing short of magic. They say that the little things matter the most- and it's obviously true in this case as well.

The face unlock system I mentioned earlier works better than on any other phone. I've ever used other features like now playing which display the name of the song playing in the background at the bottom of your screen squeeze for assistant, which makes it very convenient to pull up the assistant at any time and unlimited storage for photos and videos and original quality for free is just an absolute joy to have. This phone also has serious speakers, which sounds perfect. The speakers have been rated the best speakers on an android phone in 2019, and it's easy to see why the most underrated aspect of a phone is the haptic feedback. Most people don't really even notice it or consider it, but it's, actually.

It actually enhances your experience, and it's really, really good here. It matches the iPhones, and it's better than any other android phone, and just the vibrations really make the experience feel more premium other than that. Furthermore, it also has a water resistance rating of ip68, which means it can stay submerged in 18 meters underwater for 30 minutes and also supports wireless charging which paired with the pixel stand, turns into an amazing digital photo. Album slash, bedside alarm clock. All of these extra features really enhance the entire overall experience with this phone.

This has easily been the best smartphone I've ever used as my main daily driver, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't have its own share of locks, lack of storage options with only with a starting storage of 64 GB, which only goes up to 128 GB, is really disappointing, even for a 2019 flagship. Despite how amazingly well it works in so many areas, it's hard to recommend it to many people and that's because of its undeniably shameful high price of 799, which goes up to 999 dollars for the maxed out world. If someone asked me if they should buy a pixel, 4 XL in 2021, I'd advise them against it, but that does not in any way mean that this is a bad phone. People seem to expect google to pull off something mind-blowing with the hardware each year, but they don't and that's just because the purpose of the pixel 9 is to promote clean and smooth user experience. It's very clear that the pixels exist to showcase what android really is what android really means.

Its purpose is also to push other manufacturers to improve their software game and implement more google services in their versions of android, and ever since google started making pixels companies like Samsung have tried to improve their software and make google apps the default services in their phone. So, at the end of the day, Google takes the win whether you buy a pixel or not. So that was what I had to say about this phone. Those were my thoughts and opinions two years later, and I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, please do hit that like button.

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Source : Sid Reviews Tech