from Hacker News

(Don’t) hold the phone: new features coming to Pixel 4

by EddieRingle on 7/29/19, 4:15 PM with 20 comments

• by Latty on 7/29/19, 10:40 PM

  My first thought when I heard that Apple were ditching fingerprints for face recognition was that the lag would be infuriating after getting used to picking up my phone and unlocking it as I did so. With the sensor on the back, it became a natural thing to do and meant my phone was ready and unlocked before I was looking at the screen.

  They are describing face unlock working equivalently well, which would mitigate my concerns a lot.

  The presumed lack of a headphone port is annoying though. I know it's an oft-stated thing, but still. I just wish anyone was offering a phone with a second USB-C port on top as an alternative. It'd be useful in other ways too.

  My main issue with wireless headphones is that I swap between 3+ devices regularly and I have never found any good wireless headphones that handle that as well as just swapping a cable, as counter-intuitive as that is.

  There was a time I said I'd never buy a phone without a physical keyboard (mostly solved by bigger screens and swiping virtual keyboards), and later a removable SD card (solved by storage size outpacing my storage needs—on a phone at least), so I assume this, too, shall pass.

• by melling on 7/29/19, 10:56 PM

  Project Soli has a lot more potential. The user interface could move off the screen.

  https://atap.google.com/soli/

• by vardump on 7/29/19, 8:49 PM

  So nice to see a phone that doesn't look like every other new phone with an edge to edge screen.

  Contactless gestures could indeed be an interesting feature. At least fresh and different one.

• by ndjskska on 7/31/19, 9:56 PM

  Is it a common problem that hitting snooze on the alarm is /too hard/?

  I find myself paying for apps that make hitting the snooze button complicated. Captchas. Math. You name it.

  Is there any combination of sensors that gives the smartphone an idea if I'm properly awake? Not talking about light sleep vs dreaming here. More the "will he get out of bed" kind.

• by 6gvONxR4sf7o on 7/30/19, 3:15 PM

  If I have to use my hands to pull my phone out of my pocket/bag/whatever, and the easiest way to make the screen point at my face is by holding it in my hand, what do the radar gestures add? It's either a gimmick or they have some very clever new UI features that might be a big change from what we're used to. I'm really hoping it's the latter.

• by Canada on 7/30/19, 11:17 AM

  I'm very uneasy with allowing Google to have control of even more sensors

• by GoMonad on 7/29/19, 9:36 PM

  I had a Moto X which had IR touch-less gestures. I remember them being surprisingly useful and I missed them when I retired the phone.

  I'm optimistic to see what these radar based sensors can add.

• by jdlyga on 7/30/19, 2:46 PM

  Will they get rid of that chin bezel? Most android phones except huawei have them, and it's very 2016.

• by heelix on 7/29/19, 10:35 PM

  The article graphic has an annotation that said audio port - be nice if that really is the case.