The Google Pixel 4 XL Review: Stuck In The Past In 2019
by Andrei Frumusanu on November 8, 2019 11:30 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Pixel 4
- Pixel 4 XL
System Performance
One aspect Google Pixel devices have always excelled at is performance. With every generation, Google had opted to customise the BSP stack and improve on Qualcomm’s mechanisms to be able to extract as much performance out of the SoC as possible. In recent years these customisations haven’t been quite as evident as QC’s schedulers became more complex and also more mature. The Pixel 4 again makes use of Qualcomm’s scheduler mechanisms instead of Google’s own Android Common Kernel. The Pixel 4 also arrives with Android Q which is one of the very few devices in our testbench which comes with the new OS version.
We’re testing the Pixel 4 at three refresh rate settings: the default 60Hz mode, the automatic 90Hz mode, and the forced 90Hz mode. As with the OnePlus 7 Pro earlier in the year, we’re expecting to measure differences between the different display modes.
Starting off with the web browsing test, we’re seeing the Pixel 4 XL perform quite averagely. The odd thing here is that it’s showcasing worse performance and scaling than the Pixel 3 last year in all but the forced 90Hz mode. It’s also interesting to see how the forced 90Hz mode is able to post an advantage over the regular 90Hz mode even though the content of the benchmark doesn’t contain anything in particular that would have the automatic mode trigger to 60Hz.
In the video editing test, which isn’t all that significant in terms of its results, we do however see the differences between the 60 and 90Hz modes. Again, it’s odd to see the 60Hz mode perform that much worse than the Pixel 3 in this test, pointing out to more conservative scaling of the little CPU cores.
In the Writing test which is the most important sub-test of PCMark and has heavier workloads, we see the Pixel 4 perform very well and is in line with the better Snapdragon 855 devices out there.
The Photo Editing scores of the Pixel 4 are also top notch and the best Snapdragon 855 device we have at hand.
The data manipulation test is another odd one that I can’t really explain it performs better on the forced 90Hz mode over than the automatic 90Hz mode.
Finally, the Pixel 4 ends up high in the ranks in PCMark, really only trailing the Mate 30 Pro.
In the web benchmarks, the Pixel 4 performs quite average to actually quite bad, compared to what we’ve seen from other S855 phones. I’m really not sure why the degradation takes place, I’ll have to investigate this more once I have another S855 with Android Q.
Performance Conclusion
Overall, performance of the Pixel 4 is excellent, as expected. The big talking point here isn’t really the SoC or Google’s software, but rather the 90Hz screen of the phone. It really augments the experienced performance of the phone, making it stand out above other 60Hz phones this year.
That being said, unlike last year, I can’t say that the Pixel 4 is amongst the snappiest devices this year as that title was already taken by the new Huawei Mate 30 Pro with the newer generation Kirin 990. Unfortunately for Google, performance of the Pixel 4 will be a rather short-lived selling point as I expect the competition (which don’t already have the feature) to catch up with high refresh screens, and also surpass the Pixel as the new generation Snapdragon SoCs are just a month away from launch.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
159 Comments
View All Comments
dudedud - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
> rarely see utilization go beyond 900MB on my current phoneAre you using just one app or do you still have a 1GB phone?
PeachNCream - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
The phone has 2GB of RAM. I use a lot more than one app at a time.Oliseo - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
You can't possibly if you're only using less than 1Gb.PeachNCream - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
I don't understand why that's so impossible. My prior phone had 1GB and hovered around 600MB utilization with occasional need for up to 750MB. Both my current phone and my prior one saw/see heavy use as a stand-in for my laptop at times when I can't be bothered to turn it on so everything from working on a few documents to gaming have fallen to my phones. On the other hand, I find it odd that people feel RAM-limited at 4GB or would be worried that the next couple of years using a Pixel 4 would push 6GB to its limits.s.yu - Sunday, November 10, 2019 - link
It's perplexing what phone you're using.My S6E eats more than 1GB on a clean boot, and easily surpassed 2GB even in the past when it was still supported. Now it's about a year since it's last update and it could only juggle 2 apps maximum, with lag, and system animations already off. Any additional apps and the oldest will be terminated, not to mention certain popular and well-maintained apps that are just a glorified browser (I'm talking about Taobao and the sort) will only run half-smoothly(it would sometimes get stuck for 3-5 seconds, which was very rare on my Note8) with all background apps terminated, I don't know about hidden processes but in my experience Samsung's app manager puts those to sleep as much as possible, since it puts even active apps to sleep resulting in me missing notifications from almost all apps, only SMS, call, alarm, and occasionally the calendar break through.
I could only tolerate S6E's performance because it's a backup device I only use for occasional communications and shopping, yet it still can't smoothly handle these light loads.
Spunjji - Monday, November 11, 2019 - link
Your RAM usage looks low specifically because you don't have much RAM. With only 2GB of RAM to go around, your apps will be being suspended and thus not running simultaneously.For comparison - my OnePlus 6 has been used for the browser, Signal and WhatsApp so far today and is sitting at 3.7GB of RAM usage.
StormyParis - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Very informative thank you; especially the real-life pictures from almost all current flagships.I've jumped off the flagship bandwagon several years back. I'm curious how more reasonnably-priced handset (Redmi Note 10 especialy) would fare.
id4andrei - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Great review Andrei but I have some questions regarding the benchmarks in general.First, on the GPU section, how do you corroborate the massive discrepancy between 3dmark GRAPHICS and the GFXBench series of benchmarks? I mean, on the former, the A series GPU seems on par with the competition, but on the latter the A series GPU is orders of magnitude better. I would interpret it that the difference is actually not between the GPUs but between the API implementations, GFX runs in Metal on ios and in Vulkan on android. Am I correct to read it this way?
Secondly, on the CPU side, referencing 3dmark PHYSICS, the A-series actually does not keep up with the competition. Now don't get me wrong, I understand that A13 is the most complex mobile CPU on the market, biggest and most expensive die. I also understand your testing with SPEC in an active cooled scenario. It clearly shows the quality of the design, desktop class arch. On the bursty side, the A13 is also on top, referencing Geekbench and other short benches. Why is the 3d mark PHYSICS the Achilles' heel? Talking "phones in hand", past the burst time interval, is Snapdragon able to sustain its performance better and higher than A13?
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Adrenos performing well in the 3DMark GPU test might be related to some corner case and their microarchitecture does well there.Similarly, the physics test might have some prefetcher or inter-core dependency limitation that doesn't fare well on Apple's CPUs.
id4andrei - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Thank you for the prompt response. On the GPU, if I may, similarly with how javascript tests are also about browser engine optimizations in addition to hardware, isn't the difference between Vulkan and Metal as implemented in their respective OS, an academic asterisk on GFX numbers?