the pixel 4 it has finally actually arrived at expert towers no this isn’t a joke it is a very real thing and because google couldn’t actually have a real-life launch event what they’ve done instead is sent me a launch in a box so let’s go check it out i’ve got to admit i never actually thought that this deer would come so i am genuinely proper excited we’ve got some random shenanigans and there it is in all of its glory the thorn that we’ve all been waiting for for quite some time it does actually exist and some bonus refreshments as well i think this is non-alcoholic yep non-alcoholic celebratory mocktail boo i said i can’t actually get the bastard out anyway so now that in budget um yeah if it was booze i probably would have shredded the box with my teeth to get to it but uh yeah some sweets and stuff to recreate the uh the launch experience at home the mini mouthful how did they find out my college nickname but enough of that randomness let’s check out the google pixel 4 itself and you may have noticed on that box there it’s going to cost you 349 quid when it goes on sale making it cheaper than the pixel three-year when it first launched last year you’ll be able to pre-order the pixel fourier from september the 10th and it will
actually go on sale from october the first on the google store i can’t actually believe i’m finally lifting the lid on the google pixel 4 i’m getting all emotional up in here uh so there’s the actual smartphone itself let’s stick that aside see what else you get in the box so first i have a quick start guide which also comes with a porky pin device attached to get your sim inside the bugger once you’ve got your standard 3-pin uk plug you’ve got your type-c type-c usb cable you’ve also got a quick switch adapter as well which is a nice little bundled accessory just allows you to quickly copy your data from your old smartphone to the new one and now the main events the actual google pixel 4a in the flesh now i’ve only just prized the pixel 4 here from its box and already my heart is filled with an everlasting joy because this thing is just 5.8 inches it is pleasingly compact i can’t remember the last time i fondled something this small and i’ll leave you to make your own jokes there we basically already knew what the pixel 4 it would look like from all the leaked renders and everything but it does look very very smart in the flesh and of course it’s all about that please and hand feel as you can see the two tone aesthetics of the previous generation have been completely dispensed with so you just got this all matte finish here on the back and just black will be your only color choice for the pixel 4a certainly at launch i’m kind of hoping that google releases some more vibrant models uh later on because especially with this dinky form factor it just lends itself to some nice creative colors as usual of course though you’ve got a differently colored power button just to help it stand out a bit there uh
how’s just above that volume rocker up top it is fantastic to see a proper headphone jack in place as well and then around back you’ve definitely got what is the smallest dinkiest little camera grill that i’ve seen in quite some time because it’s literally just a single camera lens and also that led flash as well so it makes a difference from the quad lens behemoths you usually get these days and of course a very welcome return for that rear mounted fingerprint sensor as well which is actually missing from the flagship phone which was a serious drawback so a bit of a shame about the lack of a vibrant finish but uh we’re going to do now is get the pixel 4a all set up and then take you on a tour of the hardware and the software so here we are pixel 4a all ready to rock and roll and naturally of course the software is android 10 perfectly stock version and the great thing about buying a google handset as well is that you’re guaranteed at least three years of os and security updates and that’s something you’ll get from very few other manufacturers nokia pretty good on that front and one plus to be fair to them with the nords they just said uh two years of os updates and three hours of security updates which is really great to see now first up on the security front of course you’ve got that rear mounted fingerprint sensor as you see this quick tap of your digit to that scanner and you’re straight into your desktops nice and nippy uh so that’s great to see but of course you don’t have any face or recognition because that’s not included in stock android uh so if your fingers are a bit grubby unfortunately you’re kind of
stuck just kind of entering your pin with your knuckles and even though it’s nice and compact the pixel 4a does offer a little bit of one-handed help as well so for instance you can drag down that notifications bar from anywhere on the desktops and you can even use that re-mounted fingerprint sensor as well just swipe your finger down on that and it will drag down the notifications bar as well it’s great to see a lot of the best flagship features coming over from the pixel 4 to the cheaper pixel 4a so for instance you’ve got that excellent recorder app which can actually transcribe your audio for you which is really helpful if you’re recording an interviewer meeting something like that dive on into the sound settings you’ll see you’ve got that live caption feature again as well which can actually uh place up text on the screen if you’re watching a youtube video or something that doesn’t have subtitles and rather hilariously that comes with a high profanity setting as well and let me tell you that expletive filter definitely has to work double time when dealing with any tarantino films goodfellas stuff like that in fact i think this has actually completely broken it and of course you’ve got classic pixel features like the uh now playing uh setting which just basically shows you whatever song is playing in your vicinity there on the lock screen and the creepy part is it will actually listen in uh 24 hours a day so whenever
you’re walking down the street you’re just passing random shops they’re playing a bit of music whatever it’ll get identified it’ll pop up here so you can reminisce about your day but anyway i’m gonna try and get a full tips and tricks guide for the pixel 4a on the go so stay tuned for that for a in-depth look at all of those great features and now let’s turn our attention to that gorgeous 5.8 inch oled screen now i’ve been checking out some disney plus and netflix and stuff on this thing and so far i’m definitely in love it’s your typical oled panel so nice and bright i like this is on maximum brightness right now it is positively eyeball searing uh those really punchy colors really really shine through as well they absolutely leap off the screen and smack you full on in the face it’s a full hd plus resolution so those images are nice and crisp even if you get really up close there with your face no worries whatsoever and those bezels are placing these skinny surrounding the display as well of course you do have the little cut hole selfie cam notch thingy in the corner there but it’s kind of wedged out of the way so you barely even notice it to be perfectly honest and that’s probably just as well because i can’t see any way of actually blocking out that the selfie cam from view if you’re not really a fan so it’s definitely a good quality oled panel but unfortunately it does max out at 60 hertz as far as the refresh rate goes there’s no 90 hertz option which pretty much all of its mid-range rivals do often now like the oneplus nord the real me x55g actually goes up to 120 hertz which is bonkers uh the moto g 5g plus etc etc let’s have a squint at the audio and what you get here is actually a
stereo speaker setup so you’ve got the earpiece here which can be used for media and also the downward firing one as well so let’s boost up that volume see what the quality is like i’ve used all four of these devices as my full-time personal smartphone and i gotta say i love all four but which one might be best for you and yeah it’s not real massive surprise that the bottom firing speaker here is definitely pulling more than its fair share of the weight here uh the top earpiece is technically used for media as well it does blast out some audio but it’s very very tinny uh so definitely the bottom speaker is where it’s at and as far as that goes you know the clarity is absolutely fine that top volume is certainly loud enough to cut through a noisy environment so it’ll definitely do the job and unfortunately you don’t get any form of equalizer or anything like that here in the audio settings on the pixel 4 here which is again something that quite a lot of its rivals do offer now for that 350 pound price point the pixel 4a the specs and the features generally hold up pretty well but one area where is lacking combat some rivals is the performance what you’ve got here is the snapdragon 730 chipset whereas most of its rivals like the oneplus nord the real mx55g they use the 765g now the 730 should provide strong everyday performance your app should load up no problems whatsoever you should be hanging around waiting for stuff to happen especially as you get a pretty generous six gigs of ram packed into this thing but unfortunately if you are into your gaming it’s going to be a bit more limited so we’ll of course be fully testing the performance on the pixel 4 here for my in-depth review but i’m just going
to have a quick blast on call of duty mobile now to see how it holds up so first up let’s go to the audio and graphics and as you can see it’s set on high and high by default but let’s put it on very high uh for both and see how it cooks okay let’s do it oh it’s already 21.11 okay i’m halfway halfway through the match at least we’re winning where is everybody oh there they are oh that was lucky okay he’s on my side oh he’s not finally i’m starting to see why the blues are winning because the reds are absolutely bloody awful so yeah that played absolutely fine i didn’t notice any drop frame rates or anything like that uh even on the high detail levels that’s really good to see and after about 15-20 minutes of call of duty action played two full games uh starting to get a little bit warm but not too toasty thankfully but i will be fully testing out for that in-depth review to see how it handles an intensive game in session uh so touch with so far snapdragon 730 seems to be doing the job i guess helped along by the fact that it’s stock android and everything as well but of course the fact that it’s a 730 means that you don’t get built in 5g support here which again is something that a lot of the pixel 4 is rivals do offer like the again the oneplus nord the real me x55g etc one of the things i’m most intrigued by however is the battery life of course the pixel 4 flagship was a complete dud in this respect the pixel 48 has got a dinky 3140 milliamp cell because of the compact size of it but so far it is draining really slowly and you’ve also got this adaptive battery feature on hand and this can just cull apps in the background make sure they’re not
draining your juice too fast uh google ranks you’ll get 24 hours of mixed use from this thing although it’s kind of sounds like light mixed juice no always on display action uh you know not full on youtube streaming or gaming obviously frankly if the pixel 4 lasts me a full day on a full charge unlike the pixel 4 flagship phone then i’ll be a very happy bunny but again i’ll be testing out for my in-depth review as for the storage it’s 128 gigabytes of internal space here on the pixel of 4a and unfortunately that’s not expandable via microsd because you just get a single sim slot and that’s it and last up let’s flip over the pixel 4 here and check out that 12.2 megapixel camera lens all on its launch got a bit of ois built in and dual pixel phase detection autofocus so first up as you can see there it’s google’s standard pixel camera app uh so nice and straightforward very simple to use you’re not inundated with features and toggles and all sorts you do have a little a pull-down thing which you can get on the go right here with a timer and the likes of that on the go but if you don’t need it then just get it out of you nice and easy you do of course have a variety of different camera modes that you can swap between so of course you’ve got good old portrait mode which just uses google software smart in order to detect your subjects and the background separate the two and then just add a bokeh style blurry effect as you can see here this actually saves two images as well the original standard photo and then the one with the bokeh style effect added and google is also very proud of its night sight feature as
well and rightly so because it does the job nicely at least it did on the pixel 4 and i’m sure it will here on the fourier as well just captures a variety of different exposure shots melds them all together and then what you get is a nice bright bit of background action uh so yes it really brightens up those darker elements and just gives you a nice orange balanced snap and the pixel 4a can also detect if you’re pointing it up at the sky and then it flips into astrophotography mode so as long as you’ve got some sort of tripod or some way of keeping the phone perfectly still and take a really long exposure shot and yeah could get some shots of some very distant stars and potentially some aliens flipping us off you can also get a bit of video action on the go of course and you’ve got the option of swapping between the default full hd and 4k resolution footage as well but if you leave it at full hd you can shoot either at 30 or 60 frames per second i’ve also got a small selection of other bonus modes as well as you can see i got a good old slow motion and time lapse you’ve got google lens naturally a bit of photosphere which i don’t know if anyone actually ever bothers using that and panorama mode as well do people still shoot panoramas if they do job done and i’m certainly not uh missing the macro lens or anything like that here on the pixel 4 it would have been nice to have an ultra wide angle lens because i do quite enjoy some of the dramatic shots you can get with that sort of thing but anyway let’s swap around to the front facing eight megapixel
selfie cam and hopefully this will do the job very nicely for instance and stuff even though the megapixel uh account is a lot lower than it is on quite a lot of rivals smartphones again and i swear to jesus i’m just incapable of taking a good selfie this is why i’m not on instagram people this is just ugh well the good news is of course you’ve uh once again got those portrait smarts using the uh the slick google software and you can even get their night sight action on the go using that front facing camera as well hold still as you can use if you’re trying to take those uh low light selfies and the uh the sexy club and for your front-facing video it looks like basically it’s full hd and that’s your whack no 4k option and there you go that in a nutshell is the google pixel 4a smartphone as i say going on full sale for 350 pounds from the google store so are you tempted be definitely great to hear your thoughts down below i’ll be doing comparisons with the likes of the oneplus node as well and stay tuned as i say for my in-depth review to see what i think of the battery life the actual performance and everything else and for more than the latest greatest tech please do put subscribe ding that notifications bell but and have yourselves a lovely dear people cheers everyone love you
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