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The Pixel 4’s latest battery compromise? Artificially capped display brightness, Ars Technica

The Pixel 4’s latest battery compromise? Artificially capped display brightness, Ars Technica


      Maybe add a bigger battery next time? – Hey.

             

Hidden feature allows the Pixel 4 to approach semi-competitive display brightness.

      

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                          The Google Pixel 4.

                                                            

                                                  Ron Amadeo

                                      

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                          The back of this one is white.

                                                            

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                          Normally the forehead is jet black, but if you blast it with light, you can see all the sensors inside.

                                                            

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                          The bottom houses one of the stereo speakers.

                                                            

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                          Here you can see the camera bump.

                                                            

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                          The side.

                                                            

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                          The other side has this colorful power button.

                                                            

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                          The new Google Assistant has this multi-colored design at the bottom.

                                                            

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                          The G logo.

                                                            

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There’s a growing mountain of evidence that the Pixel 4 was saddled with a battery that’s just too small, and Google’s road to an acceptable runtime involved slashing the phone’s abilities with software limits. The latest discovery comes fromXDA Developers’Mishaal Rahman, who found an unused high brightness mode hidden in the Pixel 4’s code.

A “high brightness mode” has become a typical feature of smartphone display panels. Rather than a dedicated toggle, manufacturers usually enable a high-brightness mode when the user pegs the brightness slider all the way to the max or when the ambient brightness sensor detects sunlight. This usually negatively affects battery life, but when the choice is between seeing your phone or not seeing your phone in direct sunlight, the runtime tradeoff is a welcome option.

The Pixel 4 display is not that bright, with a full-screen peak brightness ofaround 450 nits. The Galaxy S 10, on the other hand, has a peak full-screen brightness of800 nits,And a big difference seems to be the lack of this boosted brightness mode. Rahman found the Pixel 4’s high brightness mode hidden in the Pixel 4’s kernel, but it’s not a mode normal users can freely switch into. It doesn’t turn on via the slider or with high ambient brightness.

As usual, Rahman figured out a way to toggle the feature on and off with root access, which will allow the Pixel 4 to hit a more acceptable peak brightness of 610 nits. It sounds like flipping the switch makes the feature work just like it does on a Samsung phone — it just uncaps the brightness slider, allowing the max setting to pump out more light.

This is the second big discovery around the Pixel 4’s totally wonky display implementation. Pixel 4 is advertised as having a “Smooth display,” which is a reference to the panel’s 90 Hz capabilities, but unlike every other 90 Hz phone on the market, thePixel 4 doesn’t run at (Hz) mode all the time. Instead, Google tied the refresh rate to the display brightness and the ambient light, with the result being that the “90 Hz “Pixel 4 runs in 60 Hz mode most of the time. Google said the 90 Hz mode was limited to “preserve battery,” so it’s likely that the brightness caps were put in place following that same line of reasoning.

The battery on the Pixel 4 has been a major concern since the phone was announced. The smaller Pixel 4 has only a 2800 mAh battery, a downgrade from the 2915 mAh battery on the Pixel 3 and a lot smaller than the similarly sized Galaxy S 10 ‘s 3400 mAh battery. For a Samsung flagship with a battery comparable to the Pixel 4, you’d have to go back to the Galaxy S6, which is five years old now. The Pixel 4 XL is a bit better but still not competitive, with a 3700 mAh battery compared to Samsung’s 4100 mAh battery. Keep in mind that these phones are the same price when comparing like-for-like storage options.

After the 90 Hz mode’s limitations were discovered, Google shipped a November patch that allowed 90 Hz to work in slightly brighter conditions, buttesting revealedthe Pixel 4 still runs in 60 Hz mode the vast majority of the time. Maybe we’ll get a brightness-uncapping patch soon.

                                 

                  

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