Antonio Villas-Boas/Business Insider
The Google Pixel 4.
- Google's Pixel 4 doesn't have a popular and trending camera lens that the competition has: ultra-wide.
- In my opinion, this was a bad move for three reasons: because ultra-wide cameras are often more useful than zooming; the Pixel 4's zoomed lens isn't good enough that it makes up for the lack of ultra-wide; and the Pixel 4 is a less versatile smartphone camera as a result.
- This is only one opinion, as some people may actually prefer better zooming to an ultra-wide lens.
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Google's brand-new Pixel 4 is missing a key feature when it comes to the camera.
The $800 flagship phone may have a dual-lens camera system, but it's lacking the ultra-wide camera that its peers - the $700 iPhone 11 and $750 Samsung Galaxy S10e - do have.
The iPhone 11 and Galaxy S10e have both a regular camera lens and ultra-wide lens, and the latter can be used to capture more scenery or capture a subject in full if it's too close for the regular camera lens.
Google, on the other hand, decided to double down on zooming on the Pixel 4, which has a 2X optical "telephoto" zoomed lens that's enhanced with Google's digital "Super Res Zoom" software magic. Theoretically, the Pixel 4 is meant to take great zoomed photos at 2X zoom and beyond.
But in my opinion, Google made three big mistakes concerning the lenses on its Pixel 4 camera, and it makes the Pixel 4 less appealing than it could have been as a result.
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