Someone, most likely quite a few people, will be pulling their hair out about now. Companies these days are unable to prevent some leaks in their supply chain giving information out to users but never in their worst nightmare would Google have predicted that a retailer in Hanoi would be selling “nearly-finished samples” from the Pixel 4 production line, for 25M VND (AUD$1,400).
Google may start rethinking the movement of their production lines from China to Vietnam if this continues.
Whatever the case in the end we get everything revealed to us through videos and online blogs who push out reviews before the rest of the world has even seen the device.
Overnight a photo-based review from Genk.vn was published and for those of us that do not speak Vietnamese and found the videos hard to follow it provides a lot more information (thanks to Google Translate — kind of ironic isn’t it?). The unit they obtained is most likely a prototype of late sample as the hardware is as expected but much of the new software did not work (such as Motion Sense, possibly due to Soli sensors not being present) and the bootloader was unlocked.
To start with the Pixel 4 XL will indeed have 6GB of RAM, sport a Snapdragon 855 processor and will have 8x zoom for their rear camera and their Soli-powered Motion Sense. The display will be a 1440P 6.23 inch 90Hz display with a large-ish top bezel and a smaller bottom bezel.
The review details the new interface for the camera showing off nearly everything and where it is. Going into settings now brings an overlay on top of the viewfinder, hopefully increasing usability. The mode switch bar is now located at the bottom making it an easy switch into each various mode. There is now the option to save selfies mirrored or not (ie. appear as they do in the viewer).
Genk.vn also show off the new Face Unlock with a GIF showing how the phone 3D maps the face although in the end they were unable to get it to set up correctly — something they attribute to a lack of Soli sensors.
There is also a good look at other new functions in the Pixel 4 including themes, which shows several pre-installed themes- it is unclear whether these will support third party themes in the future but we think it likely that someone will figure out if it is not officially supported.
The review is fairly in-depth, and although not to Ausdroid standards of depth, does give a lot of detail around the new functionality of the Google Pixel 4 and if you want to check out everything they have covered head over to Genk.vn and read for yourself (you will need to translate the website).
[EDIT] But wait, there’s more:
