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00:00Okay, so Google launched a whole bunch of new devices today.
00:07I'm going to focus this video on the Pixel 4 and the Pixel 4 XL.
00:11These are their two new phones.
00:12I've been playing with them for a few hours and I thought to give some kind of early impressions
00:16on them.
00:17They're very cool.
00:18They have a lot of cool features, but I do have some reservations about them.
00:21I'm going to focus this video just talking about some things that I really like about
00:24them and then talk about some kind of bigger picture stuff.
00:27The first thing, the most kind of important feature about these phones is definitely
00:31the 90Hz screen.
00:32For a lot of people, this will be the first time they've seen a high refresh screen on
00:37a smartphone.
00:38So a lot of phones have had them, the OnePlus 7 Pro, the 7T, and a few other gaming phones,
00:43but this will be the first time we've seen a 90Hz screen or just a high refresh screen
00:47available at just your local carrier store, to be able to walk in and be able to see a
00:51demonstration of what 90Hz looks like.
00:54And I think that that feature alone is going to be able to differentiate this phone just
00:58visually from all the other phones that are at a lot of carrier stores.
01:02The rest of the kind of aesthetics and design of this phone feels a little less polished
01:07to me than I'd expect for an $800 device.
01:10Like the design lines, the seams around everything, the relatively bigger forehead and chin, and
01:15the camera bump is just a straight up raised camera bump.
01:19There's no bevel or anything, it's just a bump that just goes straight up.
01:22So, for 2019, it's not the most elegant phone out there, but it's a reasonably nice looking
01:28phone overall.
01:29Now, Pixel phones are renowned for their cameras.
01:32They've always been known for excellent photography, and the few photos I've taken so far look
01:36really clean.
01:37It's got two lenses, a zoom, and a standard focal length.
01:40I'm surprised and just a little bit disappointed that they didn't go with a wide angle as the
01:43second lens, but that's Pixel for you.
01:48The front facing camera, it doesn't have, like last year's Pixel 3, you could adjust
01:53the focal length, you could kind of go for a wide angle selfie.
01:56This year's, it's fixed.
01:58It's like there's only one focal length, which is strange, I don't know why they opted out
02:03for it, but it's gone.
02:04I did like that, that was one of the nice features of Pixel 3's front facing camera.
02:09But the Pixel 4 does have a really cool feature this year.
02:12It's something that I feel like Android phones have lagged behind for a long time.
02:16It finally has real time processing in the viewfinder.
02:20So normally when you take a picture of something, like you'll pull up your camera, you'll shoot
02:24it, but if there's any kind of like HDR or any kind of adjustment that uses like night
02:28sight or any kind of computational photography that's happening in camera, it doesn't show
02:33it to the full extent on the viewfinder.
02:35So when I gave the Pixel 3 to my mom last year, she was taking photos and she was adjusting
02:40the exposure to try to match it to her eye, to what looked good to her eye, but then she
02:44would snap it and it would look different between the photo and what she saw on screen.
02:48And they finally did this thing where it now matches.
02:51What you're seeing on screen is what your photo's going to look like, and I think that's
02:54a really nice update in the whole process and flow of how Pixels handle photography.
02:59Okay, another feature they've talked about this event is the presence of these new radar
03:06sensors on the top of these phones.
03:09And when I saw the demo and the video short at the event, it looked really cool.
03:13It looked like something that we've seen before, like the LG G8 did something like that.
03:17And granted, this is day one and knowing Google, they're going to improve on this every chance
03:21they can.
03:22But in order for this technology to take off and in order for developers to actually make
03:26use of this sensor and this functionality, this has to be extremely reliable so you can
03:31trust it to do what your hand gestures are telling it to do.
03:34Because the moment it skips once, like all it takes is just to miss once.
03:37And then you're thinking, why am I doing this?
03:39Why am I not just pressing it with my fingers?
03:41Because your fingers never miss.
03:43You hit that button, it skips to the next song every time.
03:46But I do think that this technology can become something really cool and really useful, but
03:50we just have to get reliability down first and then I think we can build off of that.
03:56Okay, there are two things that concern me about the Pixel devices.
04:02The first is pricing.
04:05This will, the small one starts at $799 with 64 gigs of RAM.
04:08The bigger one, the Pixel 4 XL, starts at $899, also with 64 gigs of RAM.
04:13These are expensive phones.
04:15And in a store, if a random consumer just goes into a store and is able to see all these
04:20phones and compare and contrast the pricing and what they offer, the feature that really
04:24sticks out is going to be that high refresh screen.
04:27I think that is the saving grace of the Pixel 4 devices because you can see that.
04:31That's a very obvious, visible difference between the Pixel devices and everything else
04:36at most carrier stores because most stores don't offer OnePlus phones.
04:40But in that pile exists an iPhone 11, a $700 phone that has a very comparable camera to
04:46what the Pixels offer this year.
04:48Another concern I have about these phones is the battery life, particularly the small
04:53Pixel 4.
04:54So this has a 2800 mAh battery and that is a very small battery for a 90 Hz refresh screen.
05:01The screen does have adaptive tech in it to reduce the refresh rate when it's not in use,
05:05but battery life is something I'm definitely going to take a closer look at in my more
05:08comprehensive review of them.
05:10Okay, Pixel 4, Pixel 4 XL.
05:13I think they brought some really cool stuff this year, but do you think, is it enough?
05:17At $800, is this what you would expect in the next generation Pixel?
05:20Okay, hope you guys enjoyed this video.
05:22Thumbs if you liked it, subs if you loved it.
05:24I'll see you guys next time.