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Google, on the other hand, wasn't really selling very many of it's latest devices anyway. As a result, it can afford to take a risk on capturing a part of the market that until now has been served by budget phones and 3-year-old models like the iPhone 7. I mean, mostly they want to sell you advertising services, but they also really want to sell you smartphones that get the job done. If you're looking for a device that runs your business productivity apps like Gmail and Slack, takes great photos, and you're not already in the grips of the Apple ecosystem, it's hard to see why the Pixel 3a isn't the best smartphone to buy right now.
I didn't say the most powerful-- it's not. It's definitely not future-proof, or for that matter, waterproof. Still, even if you have to replace it more often, do the math. This is also where you'd go to delete face data if you decide you no longer want it. Skip the lock screen: You get the option of having a lock screen or not.
This means that when you look at your phone and unlock it you can return to where you were before. Turn on or off Motion Sense: The new radar system will detect your hand and take some actions without you touching the phone. The Soli radar chip in the Pixel 4 can detect your hand and turn on the lock screen display to give you those details. Skip tracks with a wave of the hand: When playing music, you just have to wave your hand past your phone's display to skip tracks.
Ask your Assistant to play your favorite songs, hear incoming messages and notifications, get directions and much more. Fast charging. For the holidays, you can also add gift ideas to a gift list. Skip to navigation Skip to content. Motion Photos was introduced on the Pixel 2. Optional, only if you want us to follow up with you. Search settings: Rather than rooting through everything, you can search the settings.
To go forward, move your hand from right to left. You'll see a glow at the top of the display when Motion Sense is detecting your hand. Play with your Pokemon wallpaper: Change the wallpaper to Pokemon from the coming alive section and you'll be able to use Motion Sense to interact with it. Tap the Pokemon to make them jump, show your palm to express your love. Double tap to change to another character. This lets you interact with a range of Pokemon.
It's like the wallpaper, but as a standalone app.
It's main aim is to serve up Google Assistant and the Google app loaded with information and news easily. How to pick a live wallpaper: The Pixel offers a range of "live" wallpapers, with subtle active elements in them giving some movement to your home screen. Then head to the "coming alive" section and you'll find those live wallpapers, including the interactive Pokemon option. Engage or disable searchbox effects: Press and hold on the searchbox at the bottom of the screen and a preferences box will appear. Within this is the option to enable or disable special effects.
This basically puts Google Doodles in the search box when Google has something it wants to celebrate.
Get calendar and travel details at top of your home screen: The At a Glance feature will let you get calendar entries and travel information from Google onto your home screen so they are easy to see. Long press on your wallpaper on the home screen and tap "home screen settings". Here you'll find the option to turn on the information you want - calendar, flights, traffic.
You can also enable notifications for Now Playing.
It's all local too, so no data goes to Google. View your Now Playing history and put a shortcut on your home screen: Identifying songs is fine, but when you get home, you'll have forgotten what it was. Don't worry, your Pixel has you covered. This lists all the songs your phone heard and the time it heard them. You can also place a shortcut on the home screen to make it easy to get to this area.
It was once Google Now, now it's called Discover, a digest of topics you'll find interesting. For each story you're shown, you can tap the slider at the bottom to see more or less, or the menu button to block or say you don't like that topic or publication.
Having your smartphone lost or stolen is absolutely frightening, but don't panic! Find My Phone is Google's native find your phone app. If you've added a Google Account to your phone, Find My Device is automatically turned on. Learn how to make If you have more than one phone, click the lost phone at the top of the screen. If your lost phone Find with an app. On another​.
There's also the option to customise Discover in this menu. There is now just the option to turn it on or off, but unlike Android 9, it's now system-wide, so it will also force apps offering dark mode to switch that on too. If you want to turn off dark mode for individuals apps after turning on dark theme, you'll have to do that individually in each app. Within here you also get a list of recent notifications allowing you to customise whether they can show notification dots or not.
If you think they're messy or want to limit them to important apps, you can switch them off. This can be taking a video or photo with a camera, navigating home with Maps, or adding contacts, plus many more. Just press and hold and it will pop up. You can also directly view app notifications via this method. Create shortcut icons: Once you have your list of app shortcuts pop up on the screen as above, you can drag and place them on the screen as their own individual icons. For example, on the camera, you can drag out a shortcut to go straight to the selfie camera.
Quick Settings are a really useful way to control your phone. There aren't huge changes in Android 10, but here are some tips to master their use. Manage quick settings icons: In Android 9 you can manage the order of the quick settings tiles by dropping down the usual shade from the top of the screen and hitting the pencil icon bottom left to edit.
This will go directly to the Wi-Fi settings, it's great when you can't figure out what's going on with Wi-Fi.
Quickly manage Bluetooth: The same applies to Bluetooth. Swipe down the Quick Settings shade and press and hold the Bluetooth icon. If you're failing to connect to your car, you can instantly see what's going on. Cast your screen: Want your Android device on your TV? Just swipe down and tap Cast screen and it will be sent to your Chromecast. If it's not there, add the Cast tile to your Quick Settings using the method mentioned above.
Not all apps are supported though. Turn on or off the smooth display: You can toggle the 90Hz display in the settings. Google uses an adaptive system that moves from 60 to 90Hz in certain apps and at higher brightnesses. Here you'll find the option for the always-on display, which will show the time, date, weather on your lock screen.
You can turn it off to save battery life. This is basically an alternative to always-on display, letting you see those details with a tap. That means you can glance at the time and your notification icons, without having to press any buttons or anything. Wake the display when new notifications arrive: If want the display to wake up when you get a new notification, this option is also in the lock screen settings as above. You'll need to make sure you're not getting overwhelmed with notifications, or it will drain your battery a little faster. We've found adaptive to be the best for most use cases.
Control ambient EQ: There's a new setting on the Pixel 4 that's similar to Apple's True Tone display, which aims to adapt the colour balance of the display to suit the surrounding light. In the schedule you can customise when this happens, with automatic sunset to sunrise being an option. The Google Pixel 4 gets another camera boost over the Pixel 3, not only adding an additional lens, but also offering new shooting modes. Here you can turn on "jump to camera" to allow quick access from any screen, even the lock screen. Swipe between photos, video, other camera modes: You can swipe from photo to video capture and to other modes in the camera viewfinder, which you might prefer to hitting the buttons.
Simply swipe up or down the screen in landscape, or left and right in portrait and you'll switch from photo to video capture. Find the camera settings: These keep moving around the Pixel camera app. At the top in portrait or left in landscape you'll see a drop down arrow - swipe that down and you'll open the camera settings. Note that these are specific to the shooting mode, so access these settings in video mode to change the video settings.
There's also a settings cog in the bottom corner of these settings, where you can find more. Turn off the shutter sound: That noise is pretty annoying, right? Open the camera settings as mentioned above and tap the cog. This goes to deeper settings menu where you can turn off the shutter sound. Sometimes, a good motivational quote can help inspire you to push on just a bit more. Google Assistant can help you take a step back and keep going with famous motivational quotes.
Just ask. This Google Assistant skill can also deliver quotes on any topic of your choosing. Try asking for a music quote or a space quote. Traveling to a foreign country where you don't know the language?
This is the best Google Assistant skill to help you get around. For example you can say, "How do you say 'dinner' in Spanish? The assistant will speak the translated phrase for you.