Setting up the Pixel 4

Google Pixel 4 Phone Setup

About your shipment and its packaging:

  • Your shipment contains a small black sticker from the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. (The STUDIO is my lab, which owns the phones.) Please adhere this sticker to the back side of the phone.
  • Your phone also comes with a clear plastic protective case. Please install this on the phone.
  • Do not discard the phone’s box and related packaging! At the end of the semester, you’ll be expected to return the phone and all of its accessories in its original packaging.
  • If you’re in the USA, your shipment contains a yellow padded envelope, as well as a large white padded FedEx envelope and a pre-addressed sticky label. Keep these! You will need these at the end of the semester to return the phone. (If you’re international, we’ll make other arrangements.)

Setting up the phone:

  1. When the phone arrives, please charge it using the included charger.
  2. Turn on the phone (with the white power button in the upper right edge).
  3. Leave “English (United States)” as the default language option.
  4. When it asks for a SIM Card (“Connect to Mobile Network”), choose “Skip”
  5. The phone will ask to connect to your WiFi; do this.
  6. The phone will check for Android updates. Allow it to do so and wait a moment.
  7. When it asks to “Copy apps & data”, choose “Don’t copy”.
  8. When it asks to “Sign in with your Google account”, do so. (Unfortunately, you’ll need a gMail account in order to download the necessary apps, sorry. Please contact me if you don’t have a gMail address.)
  9. IMPORTANT: on the “Google Services” page: for “Use Location” turn OFF; scroll down and choose “Accept”.
  10. For “Additional legal terms”, choose “I accept”.
  11. IMPORTANT: for “Set screen lock”, set the PIN to 1234.
  12. Skip setting up “Face Unlock”.
  13. For “Review Additional Apps” to install, uncheck all.

Set up “Soli” once you access the phone’s home screen:

In a couple of weeks we will write software for the phone’s special Soli radar sensor. It’s necessary to fiddle with some settings for it to work correctly.

  1. Type “settings” into the search bar and select the Settings app (white gear on blue circle).
  2. Navigate: Settings->Display->Advanced->Screen Timeout, and set this to 2 minutes. This will make it easier to test stuff without the phone timing out all the time.
  3. In the “Search settings” entry field, type “Motion Sense”
  4. IMPORTANT: In the “Motion Sense” control panel, turn Motion Sense ON.
  5. Make sure “Reach to Check Phone” is already “On” (it should be).
  6. In the “Search settings” entry field, type “System update”
  7. Choose “System update”; you will see that an additional security update is available. Install this. The update and its installation process will take a little while. When it is done it will ask you to Restart the phone; click “Restart”. You may need to do this a couple of times.
  8. In the Google Play Store, search for the “Motion Sense Bridge” app. This app should already be installed, but make sure it’s up to date.
  9. In the Google Play Store, install the “Soli Sandbox” app. Its icon is a purple diamond.
  10. Launch the Soli Sandbox app. On the “Try Soli Interactions” page, go through the four interactions to test that they all work: Presence, Reach, Swipe, Tap. If “Tap” doesn’t work, try re-starting your phone.
  11. In the lower left of the Soli app, there is a hamburger menu. Click it. You’ll see a list of “Prototypes”. Test out some of the apps there by swiping over the phone, etc,.
  12. In the field marked “Open URL or File”, type https://soli-jello.glitch.me/ or https://soli-fly.glitch.me/ to test out some apps that my student Lingdong and I made; these work by swiping.
  13. You can also try this app: https://soli-dashboard-plus.glitch.me/ which shows data about Soli events, plus data from the phone’s Gyro & Accelerometer.