Pixel 4 will come with face unlock and radar-powered Motion Sense features to let you skip songs, snooze alarms, and more by waving your hand over the device
it would be better on a smartwatch—but we've done the big hand-wavy thing on phones before. Ken / @kenbolido : If there's anyone I trust can pull this off, it's Google. The LG G8 did gesture control a little bit but it was HOT GARBAGE. Also, hell yeah face unlock! https://www.theverge.com/... Owen Williams / @ow : Google is straight up outing features of a phone it hasn't even announced yet....and I like it? One hell of a way to kill rumors ahead of time. https://blog.google/... https://twitter.com/... Rene Ritchie / @reneritchie : Google is handling the Pixel 4 tease/announce in a really interesting way. There's little chance of damaging Pixel 3 sales, so it's probably all upside for them. Zero Fs. (And, yeah, Face ID with... radar!) https://www.blog.google/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : I have to admit I'm getting a vague LG vibe with all these Pixel 4 pre-announcements and also the motion sense gesture thing. Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Google is using literal tiny radar to detect when the phone approaches your face so it can do the face unlock more quickly. It also promises all biometric data stays in a secure chip on the device. https://www.theverge.com/... Mishaal Rahman / @mishaalrahman : Take that, Ukrainian bloggers! Part 2: Electric Boogaloo. https://twitter.com/... Ben Schoon / @nexusben : also look at all this tech. GET OUT OF HERE BEZEL COMPLAINERS pic.twitter.com/WktjGLXhdJ Ben Schoon / @nexusben : i don't understand google's strategy with the pixel 4 marketing but i love it https://twitter.com/... Dieter Bohn / @backlon : Oh Google - you are such a card! A YouTube teaser confirms face unlock and Project Soli https://www.theverge.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
This July 2019 post is an unusual artifact: Google confirmed headline features of a phone it hadn't announced yet, with The Keyword's own contributors noting the move effectively killed the rumor cycle early. Commenters in the piece pointed to the LG G8's poorly received gesture control as the bar Motion Sense had to clear.
The bet paid off enough that by the October hands-on with the Pixel 4 and 4 XL, face unlock, radar sensing, and over-the-phone hand gestures were the review's center of gravity rather than the camera. Google then spent two consecutive days defending Project Soli in executive interviews (one, another), arguing radar-based gesture sensing is more than a gimmick.
First-order effects
- Pixel 4 buyers get two genuinely new input surfaces at launch — face unlock plus wave-to-skip, snooze, and silence controls powered by onboard radar — making sensor hardware, not camera specs, the phone's differentiation story.
Second-order effects
- Google's willingness to pre-confirm its own leaks forces rivals and leakers alike off the rumor treadmill: the announcement narrative now starts with Google's own blog posts, compressing the window competitors have to shape comparisons.
- Face unlock outlives the hype cycle — by the Pixel 8 review it had graduated from party trick to payment-grade authentication, while Google kept investing in the Soli team's credibility through repeated public defenses of the tech.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, biometric authentication migrates from convenience feature to trusted payments infrastructure across Android flagships, raising the bar for any OEM shipping a face-unlock system that isn't payment-certified.
- Meanwhile, the corpus suggests radar gestures never became the headline again: subsequent flagship launches like the Pixel 6 and Pixel 9 center Tensor silicon and AI features instead — implying bespoke sensing becomes table stakes or quietly recedes while custom chips carry the differentiation burden.
The trend: Flagship phone differentiation is shifting from spec sheets to proprietary sensing and custom silicon, with Google using its own pre-launch channels — rather than leaks — to set the comparison framework.