Details of the Pixel 4 have been swirling around this week, so Google decided to just leak the design of its next phone via its official Twitter account, revealing the backplate and new camera module on the smartphone.
“Well, since there seems to be some interest, here you go! Wait ’til you see what it can do. #Pixel4,” the tweet from the company’s verified @MadeByGoogle account read.
Renders of the Pixel 4 had leaked this week via smartphone blog Pricebaba.
The back of the phone makes some big changes. Most noticeable is the now-square camera module with a pair of lenses, a flash module and a couple of other sensor modules. Also noteworthy is the apparent lack of a rear fingerprint reader, in contrast to past models. There’s not much else evident here; they didn’t post renders of the device’s front.
Google’s Pixel 3 release kind of cemented that Google doesn’t stake much of the Pixel line’s strengths on hardware specs, it’s all about what it can leverage machine learning software tricks to do within those bounds.
On that note, it’s worth noting that Google has been pretty late to the two-camera rear-module setup; at past events the company has always justified this by suggesting that because of their software they can do more with one than most can do with two. This was clearly the case given the strengths of their cameras, but there are undoubtedly advantages to having dual cameras with different specs; it seems Google is now ready to take this plunge.