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
Conclusion & End Remarks
We’re are the end of 2019 and the Pixel 4 is amongst the last devices released this generation. I’ll be fully honest here and say that the expectations for the phone for me weren’t all that great, something quite unfortunate to say for any product but just a fact of reality given Google’s Pixel track record of hit and miss. What Google needed to provide was not just being able to deliver on their vision of a camera-centric phone, but also be able to execute on all the other core aspects that make a phone. So, did Google manage it this time around?
Design-wise, the Google Pixel 4 is quite different from what we’ve seen from the recent competition. Much like previous iterations of Pixel devices, there’s a certain uniqueness about the industrial design of the phone that doesn’t match up with other phones in the market. The Pixel 4 in particular is unique in terms of its frame and the finish of this detail. The matte back glass (On the white & orange variants, the black on is glossy) along with the matte frame make for an interesting in-hand feel that makes it stand out from the standard glossy and slippery designs out there. I think it works well for the phone. What I didn’t like about it is that the ergonomics have regressed this year. No longer having a rounded off back means the phone feels thicker and bigger in the hand.
Google’s choice of going with a regular larger “forehead” design works well, at least certainly a lot better than past notch designs. Google has populated this area with a variety of sensors, the two most notable functions being the device’s face unlock hardware as well as the new Project Soli radar. The face unlock is well implemented and is fast, but I would have wished Google had also gone for an optional fingerprint scanner. It feels like this design decision was made in 2017 or early 2018 in response to Apple and before under-screen fingerprint sensors started to become the standard.
Project Soli, other than facillitating the face unlock function response time, feels like a gimmick. It’s been attempted and implemented in the past, and even LG’s recent attempt in the G8 was honestly underwhelming and quite pointless. Google’s promotional videos of Project Soli certainly aren’t representative of how it’s implemented in the Pixel 4, and its uses are extremely limited.
The screen of the Pixel 4 is a major feature thanks to its 90Hz refresh rate. On the Pixel 4 XL we tested, it worked quite flawlessly, although there’s concerns about Google’s power management and how it currently automatically switches to 60Hz when under 75% brightness. It’s easy to force the phone 90Hz all the time and the battery hit is (In the grand scheme of things) minor.
The display panel itself is good, although it’s definitely not an “A+ grade” as Google wants to promote it as. The first hurdle is that it doesn’t get very bright and maxes out at 436 nits – quite significantly below any other flagship this year. Colour calibration is adequate enough and definitely an improvement over past Pixel devices, but with still some evident issues such as non-linear gamma or in our case a green tint to the colour balance.
Performance of the Pixel 4 was excellent, but nothing that differed too majorly from other good implementations of the Snapdragon 855. GPU performance was average and also in line with what we’ve seen from other S885 phones. It’s just a pity that Google is on this weird product cycle where they release their newest flagships at the tail-end of a SoC generation. I’m having a hard time justifying Pixel phones at their price range knowing well that you’re not getting the fullest return on investment over initial lifetime of a device.
The camera on the Pixel 4 is inarguably its main selling point. Google has made definitive improvements to the camera quality with the newer generation sensor and the new HDR+ algorithm – the most notable change being that the new camera no longer has such a poor grip on shadows, and showcases improved dynamic range. Whilst it was meant to be a feature of the Pixel 4, Google’s new colour balance algorithm this time around had more misses than hits, with a tendency of producing too warm pictures.
In low-light, the new camera sensor upgrade is again visible as it’s able to achieve lower noise levels when having to capture more of a scene when in lack of light. In general, while the upgrades are good and healthy, it’s naturally not as big an upgrade and jump compared to when Google first introduced Night Sight.
The telephoto module of the Pixel 4 is ok. The quality is good, but sometimes suffers from a lack of dynamic range as well as inaccurate colour balance. Super-zoom is a positive feature of the camera, but I feel like Google is maybe overstating its use and quality impact. In general, the Pixel 4’s camera is about equivalent to a 2.5x telephoto module in terms of the spatial resolution it’s able to produce in zoomed in images.
The problem for me is, that I have a hard time actually really differentiating the Pixel cameras to what other vendors are offering. Google has some edges here and there in the processing, but sometimes also falls behind. Generally, I feel that Google hasn’t caught up with Samsung, Huawei and Apple in the capture experience. The choice of going with a telephoto module instead of a wide-angle is I think a mistake for the average user. When you’re the only company in 2019 to not adopt a UWA module, it should give you pause to think.
Finally, the biggest draw-back of the Pixel 4 series in our testing was the battery life. There’s no mistake whom to blame here: adopting 90Hz whilst still featuring second-rate display panels and combining this with stagnant or even smaller battery capacities is a deadly combination for battery life, and there shouldn’t be any surprises that the Pixel 4s don’t fare well. In our testing with the 4 XL, the absolute end results are still somewhat adequate and the phone is still useable, but it just doesn’t compete with any other 2019 flagship. The regular Pixel 4 is likely a disaster.
Overall, the Pixel 4 frankly feels more like a device that would have been extremely successful if it had been released in 2018. Google releasing the phone this late in 2019 for prices of $799 for the regular version and $899 for the XL version just doesn’t make much sense. Those are also 64GB base variant versions by the way, you’ll have to pay an extra $100 for the 128GB models. I just can’t rationalise recommending the phones to anyone at their current price and given their compromises – Google has to either design and execute better, or give up on pretending they’re competing in the premium flagship segment and launch with prices about 25-30% lower.
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Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
It goes up to 600 nits in HDR video content, I don't currently have a good methodology to measure that.s.yu - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Daylight:I now realize that the crushed black issue is probably not really an issue, it's an attempt to hide the raised noise floor resulting from stacking underexposed shots. Take the poorly lit loading area of that building in sample 3 for example, Pixel 3 displays a similar depth into the shadows to iP11P and S10+, but Pixel 4 goes further at the cost of a lot more noise, while Mate30P simply has more shadow DR because of the larger sensor and that it doensn't use such a stack.
Also I don't believe the difference in shadow mapping(darker, but far from pitch black leaves, vs. lighter leaves) is evidence of raised DR. It's only raised DR if deeper shadows are revealed at the cost of no more noise, or if the same shadow is now less noisy, but neither is true as evident in the foreground shadow of sample 4, Pixel 4's shadow is, as I noticed at GSMA without even a direct comparison, more noisy than Pixel 3's. Not only noisy but flat-looking, an overdone HDR effect. It's so bad there's blotching, under the roof of the building to the left in sample 4. The costs seem to notably outweigh the gains, or Pixel 4 used an even faster shutter for this specific shot to recover more highlight, resulting in worse shadows. In this shot iP11P's hybrid bracketing approach utilizing longer exposure time for some of the frames shows its strength and delivers the most solid shadows among the different stacking approaches. So if Apple were to lift shadows to the same extent as Pixel 4 then we might have been able to see deeper shadows back in sample 3.
Come to think of it, Pixel 4's noisy shadows were even notable in the official samples leaked before launch. I thought it was due to pre-retail firmware but I was too optimistic.
Look's like Apple's is the best overall but Pixel 3 has the most stable detail retention. Samsung still lacks detail as it has been for quite some time but at least DR wise it generally matches Apple. Huawei's latest Mate30P greatly dials down both sharpening and NR resulting in a surprising number of keepers, only sometimes sharpening would seem too low yielding in what's now not waxyness but a thin haziness, or maybe the sharpening threshold is too high.
Low light:
In the first sample Pixel 4 obviously added more NR, not a good choice as the noise level of Pixel 3 in this image is completely manageable, more NR only smeared the output. iP11P seems between the two Pixels in a number of metrics. Huawei's night mode apart from somewhat aggregated texture intensely suppresses highlights at the cost of various artifacts present since P20P, can't say I ever liked it.
Sample 2: Again Pixel 4 is rather taking the shove the noise floor in your face approach rather than actually yielding more shadow DR, just look at the blotchy sky compared to its predecessor, however it's able to better recover highlights from the office windows.
In the castle sample Pixel 4 definitely does something right, it's not only much cleaner but the blotchy sky is gone. Also I suspect less falloff from the new lens, which yields better corners. Mate30P's technically very large UWA is better than the Samsung's tiny sensor yet a lot worse than the main, perplexing as this sensor's output stacked should still be competitive, also the fact that Mate30P's night mode is only ~21mm equiv. which is halfway between the other two UWA(~12-13) and the mains, in fact leaning toward the FoV of the mains is another issue to consider.
Second last sample: Apple's algorithm of being able to extract data from relatively sufficient light but complete inability to work with deeper shadows in low light reminds me of the Kandao RAW+ I tried out recently, it's similar in that decent data from a single frame could be greatly improved when stacked, but really poor data from a single frame is left untouched no matter how many frames you stack, which could result in very clean highlights yet completely useless shadows at a certain noise level.
Andrei Frumusanu - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Thanks for your input, great post.s.yu - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
:)s.yu - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
Thanks for the great samples, your hands seem even steadier than before and the framing is far more consistent than what I expect of handheld comparisons.hoodlum90 - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
Great analysis and I agree with much of your comments. Each of these cameras provide a slightly different look with different emphasis placed on Noise Reduction / Detail, White Balance, shadows, highlights, etc. I think a lot of it comes down to your individual preference.Personally I do not like how Samsung applies a lot of noise reduction which impacts detail. But I know there are many that prefer this.approach.
The Night scenes seam to provide the greater variance. One example is the Castle where the S10, Pixel and iPhone provide similar renderings with differences in white balance, noise reduction and detail. The P30 Pro seems to take a different approach that I do not like. In this scene the P30 Pro provided a more flat lighting that seems unrealistic. The background trees are the brighter green and the sky has lost all cloud detail. This reminds me of the HDR from the previous gen iPhones that also did not look realistic.
s.yu - Saturday, November 9, 2019 - link
"Personally I do not like how Samsung applies a lot of noise reduction which impacts detail."Yeah, me neither. What's even more worrying was that the Note10 series had that up a notch compared to the S10 series which was at least largely on par with Note9 and S9. There's hope for a different turn if S11 uses that new HMX, or at least 27MP would still match the pixel downsampled to 12MP, but there's also speculation that the flagship won't use the best and largest sensor(seeing how Mi Note 10 is close to 1cm thick it makes sense).
"The Night scenes... that I do not like."
Yeah, me neither. :) It's too flat, not only from Andrei's review but also from GSMA's review that came out faster with far fewer samples. In some instances P30P/Mate30P would suppress highlights so much that a night scene is turned to a dusk scene as street lamps look dim and weak and cast light not significantly brighter than the surroundings. It's completely overdone and it's a mistake I wouldn't have made 10 years ago when I just started to post process my photos.
Also if you look closely at the trees I would suspect that it's artificially colored. RYYB should distinguish green poorly(it leaks longer wavelength through by design after all) and the green looks mushy with a fake-looking color tone leaning towards cyan. I wouldn't be surprised if this color was filled by the so-called "AI" as it might have recognized trees when the camera failed to determine the actual color in that area, while it's not precise enough for a more convincing fill.
hoodlum90 - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
There is a little trick to force the Night Mode option on the iPhone 11. The iPhone seems to determine the mode based on what it is focusing on. If you manually focus on the one of the darker area in the night photos where Night Mode was not an option, then it would show up as an option. You just need to remember to manually lower exposure as the scene may end up brighter than expected. Something similar can be done to enforce the "deep fusion" mode in certain instances although that is more difficult to determine as the iPhone doesn't tell you when this mode is used.This seems to be a quirk that Apple can easily fix but for now needs to be worked around manually.
Spencer1 - Sunday, November 17, 2019 - link
Thanks for this nugget. I’ll try it when I get my unit.Hulk - Friday, November 8, 2019 - link
I only care about the following things when checking out a phone.How does it feel in my hand?
How is the display?
How long does the battery last?
How fast does the camera open?
How good is the camera?
Honestly all high end phones are pretty good on these points. I have a Pixel 2 because I'm a Google Fi subscriber. I'll pass on the Pixel 4. I don't see any significant improvements on the points I listed above.