Pixel 4 XL 2 Week Review - I've SWITCHED... for now | The Tech Chap By The Tech Chap

Hey guys I'm Tom, a tech, Jeff and, to be honest, this is one of the trickiest reviews. I've made this year, I've been using the pixel for Excel as my day-to-day phone for the past few weeks, I've properly switched to it, but I'm not sure for how much longer and phones like the note, M, plus one plus 70 pro when iPhone 11 Pro are all very tempting alternatives. So I showed this to a few of my friends recently and one of them picked it up, and the first thing they said was how it reminded them of like a mid-range Nokia phone and since then I can't really unsee it. That's not a terrible thing, of course, and I do quite like the simple design on the back, even if it does remind me of a panda a little and I appreciate having stereo speakers and ip68 water resistance, but it just doesn't look or feel like a phone that costs eight hundred and thirty pounds of $900 and that's the base price with just 64 gigs of storage. Add another hundred. If you want 128 gigs to be fair, Apple is the same.

They also offer 64 gigs of Base storage, but that's no excuse, that's not a good thing either, and we shouldn't be competing for who offers the stingiest specs. You know honestly I'm not that bothered at all by the pixel for having six gigs of ram on the name to us now. Dragon 8:55 problem, the new eight by five plus, but when it also comes with a paltry 64 gigs of storage, a 37 hundred million power battery that barely gets me through a full day, 18 watt charging, which is the same speed as the original pixel, no ultra-wide lens, which I know a lot of people really want. No 5g option: no 4k, video on the front camera, no 4k 60 on the back, a 90 head screen that only works sometimes, and if your brightness isn't lower than 75%. It just feels like Google, have concentrated on a few areas like the new radar motion-sensing, the camera and, of course Android 10.

But everything else was just an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, though, while that was a bit of a rant, the pixel for Excel is still a very good phone. It runs pure vanilla, Android, 10 and with new gestures, dark mode and customization, it's lovely to use and paired with a ninety hurt screen. It does feel fast and responsive. There's, no fingerprint reader here, it's all about face unlocking.

So this fancy radar motion, sensing tech is based on Google's project sold, which is kind of cool, and I really do like the seamless face, unlocking no swipes button presses or anything, and because it has an IR scanner as well. It works just as well at night. It really is one of my favorite features, but there are a couple of little problems. You've probably heard that you can unlock it with your eyes closed, so bring it up. Yeah, I'm going to, In, I.

Don't think it's really a big deal unless maybe you on the bus or the train or something someone steals, your phone puts it in front of your face and then unlocks it. Although then, the screen may wake you up or if you have a disgruntled partner, who wants to check your messages? I, don't think it's a big deal. What is more, frustrating, though, is most banking and finance. Apps aren't actually compatible with this face, unlocking so, unlike most of the phones, we could maybe use your fingerprint reader to log into PayPal or your bank with this, because it doesn't recognize the face, locking you have to enter your traditional password or your code, which is a bit frustrating beyond my initial hands-on video I've never used gestures to swipe between songs, I've, never used the Pok?mon wallpaper, it's all a bit gimmicky and the trade-off is we have this big forehead, bezel I mean an or to first on the bezels, but next to pretty much any other flagship phone with edge to edge screens or tiny notches. It does look a bit old-fashioned.

The 6.2 inch quad, HD plus screen, does look good, though it's Oleg's supports, HD, L, 10 plus, and using the adaptive display mode I think it offers a good balance between color accuracy and vibrancy. My only complaint, though, is it's not the brightest peaking at just 444 nips. The note M plus goes up to six eight six and one plus. Seventy is seven four three for comparison, but what I'd like to do to compensate for that is. Let me just keep the average Brown it's a bit higher.

You know, keep the brightness slider a little higher, so it's still punchy still usable outside, but the problem with that I'm, so worried about the battery life on the Pixel 4 XL I, just feel like I need to keep it dim just so that this actually lasts me to the end of the day. The problem is a quad HD plus resolution in 90s refresh rate and a relatively small 3700 mAh battery. Just don't add up, and so the battery life is the single biggest problem. I have with the Pixel 4 XL, now I'm, not sure. If it's AI trickery going on behind the scenes, or I've just subconsciously, started rationing, my use, but I found it's got a little better since I've started using it, but it's still a worry and unless you're able to regularly charge your phone during the day, you'll be lucky to get to 9 P at night before it runs out of juice I'm, getting an average of about five and a half hours of screen on time.

So, yes, technically it can get you through a full day as long as you're, not playing games or pushing it too hard. And while there are some things you can do to improve it. Turning off the motion, sensing radar turning off the ninety have smooth display, we'll all make a bit of a difference. Although you can't actually lower the resolution, so you can tweak a few things to maybe get extra hour out of it, but as a power user, it's just not good enough. For me, the other aspect is charging and, while I do appreciate, it supports wireless charging, although only up to 10 watts, if you're using Google's own charging stand.

Otherwise, it's just five watts with other flagship phones offering 30 40 65 watt charging the pixel fours 18 watt charger, while the same as the iPhone 11 Pro takes a good hour and a half to fully charge I mean the average battery life wouldn't be so bad if I could just top it up for 15 minutes and get another half day out of it. But again it's just falling behind the competition I think for most people, myself included that the pixels never really been about war, specs or performance. There are two things that keep me coming back to this: it's the software and the camera being Google's phone it'll be the first to get new updates features and security fixes. So when Android 11 comes out, you'll get it straight away, but I always look forward to seeing what their camera can do. I think Google proved that it's not all about megapixels and number of lenses.

It's about software processing, machine learning. For the past couple of years now, they've had one of, if not the best camera on any phone. So this year, they've added a second lens. A 2 x, telephoto zoom live HDR in the viewfinder. So now you can see what the photo will look like in real time so, whereas before you'd have to take it and then wait a few seconds to process and then check in the gallery now you can see it in real time, and it's also allowed Google to give us dual exposure controls.

We now get two sliders that control, brightness and shadows, which you can adjust in real time. Something you'd normally have to do in an editor like Lightroom afterwards, so we now get a dual lens setup with our second lens, offering two times: optical zoom, which is a nice extra, but there's more to it. Firstly, we now get super resume, which means you can actually pinch right into eight times and while it's not lossless, it's still a good deal sharper than other phones. The extra lens also helps make portrait photos look more realistic as we get different levels of depth. We also get improved.

Nitrite, 2.0 and Google I've done a good job of making the white balance look more natural across all camera modes, but it's most obvious in low-light, where the colors look a lot more true to life.9 sites is still very impressive, but other phones, including the iPhone 11 with their new 9 modes, have come a long way this year and give the pixel a run for its money. And finally, we have the new macrophotography mode in a word: it's magic when it's dark enough and stable enough, because you can't actually use this handheld Castro mode will kick in, and it takes up to 16 different 15-second long exposures. The benefit is you get very little noise and no star trails, which is something you get with normal long exposures. However, this does take up to 4 minutes, which means it's not the most practical, but then just look at the results. The photos are absolutely stunning and with a bit of light ruminating, it's amazing how much detail it captures now.

I will admit: I'm a bit of a space nerd, so I've had a lot of fun with the Castro mode on the pixel, but I reckon for most people. It's kind of just like a one-off party, trick. It's kind of cool, it's nice, that you have the option to do it, but given that you need about four minutes to take the picture, and you can't use it handheld, you have to either like set a timer and pop it down or lean against something I'll use a tripod. Furthermore, it's not the most practical, but for me, I love it. So the pixels' camera is very impressive and a great reason to buy it, but I think the note 10 plus and the iPhone 11 Pro do trade blows with it, and the lack of an ultra-wide lens I must have made is a bit disappointing.

So on the one hand, I love the camera and the software, but on the other hand, see what I did there it's just too expensive. The battery life isn't good enough and by itself in a vacuum, it's a fantastic phone, but when you consider all the competition out there, it makes it hard to recommend and actually, if you do want to find out more about all the other flagship phones, though you may want to consider buying click at the top right or than the little card thing that pops out and check out my fault flagship phone 2019 buying guide. But what do you reckon? Would you consider one of these and, if not, why not? And what would you like to see on the Google Pixel 5 that may tempt you to upgrade? Let me know in the comments below thank you so much for watching guys. I really hope you enjoyed the video and if you want to see more from me, then don't forget to hit that like and subscribe button below. I'll see you next time right here on the tech cure.

You.

Source : The Tech Chap