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Both Best Buy and Amazon.com have deals today for the unlocked Google Pixel 4 today. If you’ve been interested in Google Fi, this is obviously a phone that would be fully compatible (or it is unlocked for use on the carrier of your choice). However, I’m also posting this today because surely some readers bought a Pixel 4 over the holiday season. If you used a card with price protection, this could be a good opportunity to file a claim.
The Deal
Amazon.com
The Google Pixel 4 unlocked is on sale at Amazon today for under $572 (our affiliate links follow)Amazon also has the Google Pixel 4 XL unlocked on sale in white:
BestBuy.com
- Best Buy is offering the Google Pixel 4 64GB unlocked without activation and bundled with a $200 Best Buy gift card for $699.99
- Google Pixel 4 64 GB unlocked in Black for $699.99 (choose “activate later” for this price and then the $200 gift card will automatically be added to the cart with the phone)(our affiliate link)
Quick Thoughts
If you’re looking to buy a Pixel 4 right now for personal use, the Best Buy deal is probably better if you value the gift card anywhere near face value. Keep in mind that you could go through a shopping portal to earn a bit more back rather than using our link above (see here for the current high rates at Cashbackmonitor.com). If you’re buying at Best Buy, be sure to choose “activate later” before adding the phone to your cart (the price with carrier activation is $649.99; without activation the phone price is $699.99, but the $200 gift card will be added to your cart automatically when buying without activation).
My wife has a Pixel 3 XL that we got in the crazy Google Fi deal at the holidays in 2018. I was kind of disappointed that they didn’t run (what I thought was) a similarly good deal this year. I currently use an LG V30+ and it is getting tired and slow. Furthermore, the camera on the Pixel 3 makes me not even take pictures on my phone very much any more since they can’t possibly compare. Here are a couple we’ve taken on the Pixel 3 — surely the 4’s camera didn’t get worse. Note that we are definitely not great photographers and each of these are completely unedited – I’ve seen absolutely stunning photos people have taken with them (I emphasize the photo aspect because it has saved me from carrying around a heavier separate camera).
I wish the Pixel had a wide-angle camera. It’s other two major shortcomings for me are a disease that has spread to most major flagship phones in the past year or two: there is no mircoSD slot and no headphone jack. The former is an annoyance due to personal preference. The second just makes no sense to me; sure, I have lots of Bluetooth headphones in my house. Sometimes the batteries are dead or I’m on a foreign carrier with different rules than the US and I just want a wire to keep things simple. I wish we hadn’t gotten away from a headphone jack. /rant.
All that said, I love the photos we get on the Pixel and I’d be extremely tempted to buy this if not for the fact that T-Mobile recently launched its 5G network. While I love Fi for international coverage, I have not been impressed with it domestically and am sticking with T-Mobile for my regular cell service thanks to a grandfathered plan with unlimited LTE tethering (I often work from the car / hotels / coffee shops and don’t want to use public WiFi). I am itching for a new phone but am anticipating some deals coming when T-Mobile gets a stable of 5G phones in stock.
Of course, I would be singing a different tune if I had thought things through a bit better this holiday season. A couple of months ago, Google was offering the Pixel 4 with a Google Fi gift card worth half the price of the phone. I believe the Pixel 4 was $800 at the time and came with a free $400 Google Fi gift card. If I were smart enough to have purchased that, I imagine it might be possible to file a price protection claim to the Amazon price today — getting a further ~$230 back. If I could have had both the Pixel 4 and a $400 Fi gift card for ~$570, I’d have put 5G plans on the backburner for a while. I wish I had thought about the deal a bit longer. Of course, YMMV as to whether or not the price protection gets approved — I’m not sure whether your receipt shows a value on the gift card, though I imagine it may show the phone purchased at full price and the gift card free. See our Price Protection by issuer guide for more information on this benefit.
Anyway, whether you’re in the market for a Pixel 4 today or you have been in the market for a potential price protection claim, today could be your day.
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Dead on Amazon, still going on Bestbuy.
I’m in the same boat. A Pixel 2 user looking to upgrade but very disappointed about the lack of a wide angle camera and I disagree that stitching photos is a reasonable workaround. Instead, I currently use the Moment 18 mm lens which I attach to my pixel. It takes fantastic wide-angle shots but is hefty to carry around and cost $150 with the required case.
One thing to consider before buying a Pixel 4 is that the Pixel 4a is rumored to come out in May with the same camera, a better design, a headphone jack, for about $400. I will probably wait for the 4a. I don’t care so much about the slower chip. Snapdragon 765 is enough juice for me.
Interesting. If it does have the same camera and a headphone jack, I’ll have to consider it.
The 3a, which I have, uses the same camera as the 3 (with a few software functions missing) and adds a headphone jack to the 3, at the expense of a plastic body. So if the 4a follows the same pattern, you’re good.
Or, you could just get a 3a, which is heavily discounted now that the 4 is out.
You don’t really need a wide-angle lens, because it’s so easy to merge two or more shots. Just point your camera around and take overlapping shots of what you want in the final shot, and Google will usually merge them automatically for you.
If Google doesn’t take care of that, you can use an app like Bimostitch, which also gives you a little more control.
The purpose of a wide angle lens is not to get more in, but to enable you to get closer to the subject of your photo so it puts the viewer right in the middle of your composition
@Teo: I think that depends on what you’re trying to photograph. In my case, the most common places I want a wide angle are to photograph an entire hotel room in one frame or a business class seat or something like that. I’m sure that if you break it down to the theory of it all you can say that the subject of my composition is the center of the room and with a wide angle I can be closer to that center and still capture the far reaches of the room and all that — but I guess my point here is that I’m not looking to be artistic or think to hard about composition — I’m just looking to get the entire room or entire seat in one photo to make it easy to see (I suppose that’s what you mean when you say that it puts the viewer right in the middle of it!).
@J.M: You’re right that Google has the 360º photo feature, but I’ve found that it doesn’t always send well via text message or post into a post well. And it takes a couple of extra steps to do, whereas on my LG V30, it’s just a button I press within the native camera app and it’s instantly on wide angle. No need to pull up a separate app or section of the camera.
I especially don’t like the idea of an app because then it’s time consuming. I’m sure it leads to a better result (a better photo), but then I have to take the photos and pull up the app and stitch them together and make sure that none of them came out blurry, etc. Doesn’t enable me to just quickly take a picture of my hotel room before my toddler sprints into the room and my wife puts all of her stuff on the bed (with neither inclined to have much patience for me when we’ve just checked into a hotel late and hungry and tired). I just wish Google would add the second lens that everyone else has and be done with it so I don’t have to monkey around with workarounds.
I don’t mean the 360º feature. I mean that if you just take ordinary shots that could be combined into a panorama, Google Photos will usually do the work automatically. It’s not quite as convenient as a real wide-angle lens (and Teo is right that getting more in the shot isn’t the only purpose of a wide angle), but it comes pretty close.
And once you get used to the app, it really only adds a few seconds. You click on the photos you want to turn into a panorama, “share” them to the app, and the app comes back with a panorama. Nothing to check. Nothing to fiddle with. Still not as convenient as a one-click shot, but not as far off as it seems.