The tradeoff of putting a giant bezel on top of the phone in order to support being able to take a tiny number of actions in a few apps by waving your hands instead of touching your phone was... Probably not the right tradeoff. How often do you use your phone without, y'know, also holding it in your hand, and thus being able to touch it? And if they hadn't shipped Soli in the 4, I wonder if they would've saved enough manufacturing $$ to put an ultrawide camera in to compete with the iPhone 11...
From the current leaks it sounds like Soli isn't going to make it into the Pixel 4a; I'm curious whether it makes it into the 5 (and TBH hope it doesn't, unless they can figure out how to not make it take up a huge amount of bezel space).
Soli makes a lot of sense for the Google/Nest Home line of products, where you rarely are close enough to touch them. But for your phone? I just don't get it, and it seems like few people find it useful. I'm pretty surprised it shipped and would be very curious to learn how that happened, since it seems to have negatively impacted the product pretty heavily.
Yeah, it's just interesting that in many ways it seems like the "budget Pixel" will actually be superior to the non-budget version: a bezel-less design (at least, according to many of the current leaks) because they aren't shipping the generally-pointless Soli hardware, and likely much improved battery life because they aren't shipping a 90hz screen (that the Pixel 4 couldn't handle anyway and has had to keep software-locked to 60hz half the time just to make it through the day on a single charge). The outdated, lopsided design and the anemic battery life were two of the most-disliked features in critic reviews of the 4; interesting that the 4a will basically be a better version of the 4, with the exception of missing the telephoto camera and (probably) lack of waterproofing.
Responding to critical feedback is a good and sensible thing to do. But ideally you would be able to get feedback on large issues internally, without needing the market to reject your product (Pixel 4 sales have been reported to be quite low): Soli seems so clearly useless, and caused such obvious product design tradeoffs, that I'm curious what led to it shipping in the first place. Was it an exec who was excited about Soli pushing it through? Was there a design/engineering communication breakdown? Would be very interesting to be a fly on the wall in the retro.
Maybe I'm an outlier here but I love my Pixel 4! Battery life isn't great, but the 90Hz screen is amazing and I definitely wouldn't go back to 60Hz if you paid me.
Aside from that, the Pixel 3a doesn't have wireless charging, so if that also applies to the 4a it's a total deal-breaker for me. And I really enjoy the performance of the Snapdragon 855 - especially with 90Hz forced at all times and animations tweaked to run at 2x speed, it's extremely noticeable how fast this phone is.
Not saying the Pixel 4a won't be a good phone, but the 4 is definitely better for premium features imo.
From the current leaks it sounds like Soli isn't going to make it into the Pixel 4a; I'm curious whether it makes it into the 5 (and TBH hope it doesn't, unless they can figure out how to not make it take up a huge amount of bezel space).
Soli makes a lot of sense for the Google/Nest Home line of products, where you rarely are close enough to touch them. But for your phone? I just don't get it, and it seems like few people find it useful. I'm pretty surprised it shipped and would be very curious to learn how that happened, since it seems to have negatively impacted the product pretty heavily.