Due out in October, Google has pretty much been developing its upcoming Pixel 4 handsets in the open. In fact, it even released the above renders on Twitter last month. Now, the Mountain View firm has announced some new features that will be included in the new devices.
The new features revolve around Soli, a motion-sensing radar. As Google points out, radar has been used for years for things like sensing aircrafts, and this is a scaled down version of that. The handsets will have a Motion Sense feature, which will let you do things like "skip songs, snooze alarms, and silence phone calls, just by waving your hand."
If you follow the smartphone industry closely, you"ll surely draw some parallels to LG"s G8 ThinQ, which had a similar feature called Air Motion, although it worked differently. Hopefully, it will work better than we found that LG"s implementation worked in our review.
With Soli, Google is also promising better facial recognition. Rather than forcing users to lift their phone before ever scanning their face, the Pixel 4 will sense you reaching for your phone and it will start looking for your face immediately. Google also made a point of saying that the images used for facial recognition are never sent back to its services, and it"s all stored securely on your device.
If Google follows its previous patterns, there should be a Made By Google event in early October this year where the Pixel 4 series of smartphones will be announced.