The Pixel 4's Charging Stand: A Mixed Bag

I recently had the opportunity to get my hands on the Google Pixel 4, and while it's an excellent phone in many ways, its charging capabilities leave much to be desired. The phone comes with a standard 18-watt charger, which is a significant step up from the iPhone 11 Pro's 5-watt charger, but still falls short of the competition. Other flagship phones like the OnePlus 7T and Samsung Galaxy S10 offer faster charging speeds of 30-65 watts, leaving the Pixel 4 lagging behind.

However, when it comes to battery life, the Pixel 4 actually performs quite well. The phone's average battery life is around a full day, which is impressive considering its compact size. But what really lets it down is its inability to top up quickly. I found that it takes over an hour to fully charge the phone, even with the included charger. This is frustrating, especially when you consider that other phones can charge in under 30 minutes.

One area where the Pixel 4 truly shines is in its software. As a Google fanboy, I'm always excited to see what new updates and features the company has in store for us. And let me tell you, this phone delivers. The Pixel 4 comes with Android 10 out of the box, which means that it'll be one of the first phones to receive Android 11 updates. But more than just its operating system, I'm also excited about Google's camera software. In recent years, we've seen significant improvements in the quality and capabilities of Google's camera app, and this phone is no exception.

The Pixel 4's camera is truly one of its standout features. With a new dual lens setup, including a second telephoto lens with 2x optical zoom, it offers unparalleled flexibility and image quality. The addition of live HDR in the viewfinder allows for real-time previewing, making it easier to adjust exposure settings before taking a photo. And with the introduction of dual exposure controls, you can now adjust brightness and shadows on the fly – something that would normally require post-processing.

But what really sets this camera apart is its ability to capture high-quality images in low light. Google's Night Sight 2.0 mode is impressive, delivering natural-looking colors and minimal noise even at extremely low-light levels. And with the addition of a new astrophotography mode, you can capture stunning starry night skies – although it does require a tripod and some patience to set up.

While the Pixel 4's camera is certainly one of its strongest points, I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed by the lack of an ultra-wide lens. In today's market, where most phones offer at least one wide-angle lens option, this omission feels like a missed opportunity. Nevertheless, the phone's camera is still incredibly capable, and it's a great reason to consider purchasing it.

In terms of value, I have to say that the Pixel 4 falls short. With its compact size and impressive software capabilities, it's an excellent choice for anyone looking for a premium Android experience. However, when you consider the competition – phones like the OnePlus 7T and Samsung Galaxy S10 offer more features and better performance at similar price points – it starts to feel a bit pricey.

Ultimately, whether or not the Pixel 4 is worth your hard-earned cash depends on what you're looking for in a phone. If software and camera capabilities are top of your list, then this might be the perfect choice. But if you prioritize speed, features, and value, you may want to consider other options.

For those interested in finding out more about the latest flagship phones, I recommend checking out my 2019 buying guide. It's packed with information on all the major players, including reviews and comparisons to help you make an informed decision when it comes time to upgrade your phone.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey 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 bit 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 customisation 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 soli 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 imma Rin 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 Pokemon 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 bit higher so it's still punchy still usable outside but the problem with that is 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 bit 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's 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 allow 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 a 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 nitesite 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 site 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 astrophotography mode in a word it's magic when it's dark enough and stable enough because you can't actually use this handheld astro 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 astro 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 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 chure youhey 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 bit 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 customisation 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 soli 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 imma Rin 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 Pokemon 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 bit higher so it's still punchy still usable outside but the problem with that is 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 bit 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's 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 allow 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 a 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 nitesite 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 site 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 astrophotography mode in a word it's magic when it's dark enough and stable enough because you can't actually use this handheld astro 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 astro 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 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 chure you\n"