On September 30, 2020, Google announced this year’s new phone, the Pixel 5. But a month before that event, I picked up Google’s previous-year flagship, a Pixel 4 XL 128GB. There was a reason for that: the Pixel 5 is just that bad. Hole-punch screen, downgraded processor, squeeze sensor gone, IR gone, radar gone — by any measure it’s a piece of junk at the level of a thousand-yuan phone, the kind that competes with Xiaomi’s Redmi over here. Google’s explanation is that this time they used a bigger battery and a 5G-capable chip, so the overall experience hasn’t been downgraded. Oh my god, don’t you know Redmi has supported 5G for ages? Big battery, you say? Hell, which domestic thousand-yuan phone has a smaller battery than yours? Google proudly announced a price of $699. Bear in mind that buying a domestic phone (one that can be bootloader-unlocked) only costs me around 2000 RMB. Only an idiot would buy your Pixel 5. It’s not a flagship at all.