Google Pixel 4 – Just Black – 64GB – Unlocked

Great phone. Works well. Still going. The back is coming off the phone though. But the case I bought protects it from completely coming off.

It just has one flaw just the battery finishes VERY fast

En verdad el mejor teléfono que he tenido, el único detalle es la pila, le dura medio día de uso continuó.

Es muy rápido, la fotos que realiza son bellísimas y su tamaño es ideal para bolsillos. Planeó seguir comprando los pixel pero serían los modelos más recientes.

Background: As with many other aspects of my life, I am not a typical user so please read this review with that in mind. I am a heavy music listener, spending a lot of time listening to music in a car or at work listening over bluetooth headphones, take lots of pictures and in any other respect mostly use the phone for texting, calling, Teams, Outlook, OneDrive, multi-factor authentication, web browsing and e-book reading. I bought this phone unlocked but I have been a Verizon customer for well over a decade. I went for almost 4 years with the Samsung S8 without any issues. Towards the end, the battery was starting to give out and I was over the quality of the camera in it since I rely on that feature heavily in my work. Unfortunately, I should have done more research than I did (though I see plenty of reviews that still praise its virtues). I think it all comes down to what you’re going to use it for (tell me something I don’t know, right?).

The camera is as solid as others describe. Night Sight is actually pretty cool and produces quality pictures even in low lighting without the obscenity of a flash. Pictures taken in normal settings are true to color and sharp. Love the Google Lens feature that allows it to identify text in pictures so I can track FedEx packages or just copy a MAC address from a pic instead of typing it out. I couldn’t ask for more out of a cell phone camera. Never had issues with apps for checking mail, instant messaging, browsing or third party app use. Face recognition was just about perfect unless it was in the zone of trying to authenticate me with a PIN (it would do that occasionally and would not let me unlock by face) or I was wearing a mask. (Damn you, 2020!)

But at what cost to my peace of mind? At $650 paid up front, it shouldn’t be like this. There are several idiosyncrasies this phone has that just drove me crazy:

What gives with the battery life? – There were days where the battery would regular slip down fairly quickly to nothing and other days where it withstood my usage valiantly. I played with the battery settings and app settings on a regular basis but could find no rhyme or reason why the battery life performed worse on some days and better on others.

Screen brightness – If you read pro reviews for this phone, you’ll see them complain that the brightest display setting is only adequate in bright light environments. That is actually pretty on the mark. If you mess with the phone’s auto-detection of ambient light, beware. It will keep that setting and you may find yourself looking at a very dark screen when you need to know which freeway exit to take. Or it will go bright and eat away mercilessly at your battery. The term auto-brightness with this phone is to be taken with a grain of salt.

Thumbnails? What are those? – Another little issue that made me grit my teeth is the lack of thumbnail support when browsing your pictures using File Explorer. You cannot see picture previews if the pics are on your phone and you are using a computer to view them. Does. Not. Work. You must view the pics on the phone by date and either open them one by one or copy them off to your computer whereupon the thumbnail function will once again miraculously work. Apparently a Pixel speciality.

Weird texting issues – occasionally, my text messages to certain users would start timing out and would never work again unless I either a) deleted the entire conversation with that contact or b) delete the contact and text to the phone number instead. Not a dealbreaker, but certainly annoying when no other phone I’ve owned has ever had this kind of glitch.

Smart Gestures – Switching tracks by moving your hand was sketchy at best. It would often misinterpret shifting gears or touching the car’s screen as a request to switch tracks. I couldn’t keep the squeeze features enabled because when turned OFF the phone would pause music tracks or the Bluetooth connection would start freaking out when I held the phone’s edges too firmly. Turning that feature on just invited madness in. I have screen attention turned on, but that doesn’t stop it from going to sleep anyway and that’s without battery saver mode turned on! The only smart sense I appreciated was the SHH feature of flipping the phone over to put it into do not disturb mode.

Bluetooth issues – This is certainly not the death knell for this Google offering but more like the last straw for me. About a week ago, I installed PowerAmp to listen to local tracks since Amazon Music has issues when selecting tracks that aren’t in the cloud or doesn’t detect them altogether… or it was this PHONE! (Don’t think I don’t suspect you, you pos!) Recall how above I complained that the smart gesture function to move tracks didn’t work? Although it was working fine before, suddenly the artist and track info no longer get transmitted from my Pixel to my car AND I can’t use the car’s touch screen to skip or rewind tracks. I have to start playing with my phone while driving now to either find out what I’m listening to or change tracks. How is this progress and concern for public safety? I can’t use Alexa because my music is so loud, I would have to pause it first to talk to the phone. I tested this with my iPad and song track and forward / backward functionality work fine.

The solution, I’m afraid is to pack up this phone, trade it in and get another Samsung, which I’m doing.