At its ‘Made by Google’ event held in New York, the tech giant unveiled the much-hyped Pixel 4XL and Pixel 4 smartphones, devices known for making the most of modest hardware specs and game changing cameras. The newly launched series, however, will not be made available in India as confirmed in a statement by the company. “Google has a wide range of products that we make available in different regions around the world. We determine availability based on a variety of factors, including local trends, and product features. We decided not to make Pixel 4 available in India. We remain committed to our current Pixel phones and look forward to bringing future Pixel devices to India.”

The Pixel 4 series comes with a new touchless interaction feature as a part of Google’s ‘Project Soli’ a sensing technology that uses miniature radar to detect touchless gestures from motion tracking of the user’s hand, for example. The phone can play or stop music with a hand swipe above the phone without touching it. It can also detect a user approaching the device and wake up or go into sleep mode when the user walks away.

The Soli sensing technology is enabled by a special chip which incorporates the entire sensor and antenna array into an ultra-compact 8mm x 10mm package. Its use is based on the concept of virtual tools, which are gestures that mimic familiar real-world interactions with physical tools. A gesture like tapping the thumb with the index finger, for example, will trigger an action, in the kind of interactions being developed by Google. Even though these controls are virtual, the interactions feel physical and responsive. “Feedback is generated by the haptic sensation of fingers touching each other. Without the constraints of physical controls, these virtual tools can take on the fluidity and precision of our natural human hand motion,” according to Google’s description of the feature.

Google’s Pixel phones are usually awaited eagerly because of the camera technology, game changing on previous versions as it uses computational photography or software to process an image and make it clearer and enhanced in many ways. Google has added a telephoto lens to the camera and enhanced its computational abilities to include better handling of shadows and highlights, night photography and excellent clarity with zoom.

“Google has a wide range of products that we make available in different regions around the world. We determine availability based on a variety of factors, including local trends, and product features. We decided not to make Pixel 4 available in India. We remain committed to our current Pixel phones and look forward to bringing future Pixel devices to India," Google spokesperson said.

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