The Pixel 4 has several issues.
‘Motion Sense’ isn’t the greatest and the Pixel 4’s battery is too small. Another concern is we recently learned from savvy Android Reddit users that the device’s refresh rate drops from 90Hz to 60Hz once the device’s brightness is below 75 percent.
More investigation from the Android users discovered that if the location is still bright enough — with Ambient Lighting turned on — the phone will stay at 90Hz.
The Verge contacted Google about the concern, and the Mountain-View company supplied the publication with a statement.
“We designed Smooth Display so that users could enjoy the benefits of 90Hz for improved UI interactions and content consumption, while also preserving battery when higher refresh rates are not critical by lowering back down to 60Hz.”
In some conditions or situations, however, we set the refresh rate to 60Hz. Some of these situations include: when the user turns on battery saver, certain content such as video (as it’s largely shot at 24 or 30fps), and even various brightness or ambient conditions.
We constantly assess whether these parameters lead to the best overall user experience.
We have previously planned updates that we’ll roll out in the coming weeks that include enabling 90hz in more brightness conditions.”
This isn’t the only update Google will roll out for its pair of new flagships.
The Mountain View-based company will roll out another update that requires your eyes to be open for face unlock. That update will release in the coming months, but this refresh rate update should drop in the next few weeks, according to Google.
Source: The Verge
Correction: 10/24/2019: Refresh rate will drop when brightness dips below 75 percent, not battery.
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