Google Pixel 4a
A great Android experience and an excellent camera inside a very affordable package
Everyone is making more affordable versions of their flagships now – Apple, Samsung, OnePlus – and that’s before you get to phones from the likes of Xiaomi, Oppo, Nokia, Motorola and others that have been offering great value for years.
The Google Pixel 4a may be launching a little later than planned, but it still follows the playbook of the much-admired Pixel 3a – a cut-down, more affordable Pixel for those who don’t want the big screen, multiple cameras and premium-quality materials of the flagships.
With a 5.81-inch, 1080x2340px OLED screen, this phone has a display a little bigger than the Pixel 4 (5.7 inches) but smaller than the Pixel 4 XL (6.3 inches). While the trend is for ever-bigger screens, the Pixel 4a is relatively compact – which may or may not be to your tastes. It’s the same size as the smaller iPhone 11 Pro.
The bezels around the screen are pleasingly thin, and there’s a single punch-hole in the top left of the
display for the selfie camera. Around the back there’s matte plastic rather than the glass of the Pixel 4, but honestly we prefer the matte look.
As with the Pixel 3a, there’s no doubt that it’s a cheaper phone – but it doesn’t feel too cheap. It’s lightweight and plasticky, but it’s also comfortable to hold, and feels sturdy. You get the feeling that this phone could take some punishment with or without a case, though we should point out that it isn’t rated as waterproof or dustproof. There’s a fingerprint sensor on the back, dual speakers at the bottom, a USB-C port, and – we’re happy to say – a 3.5mm headphone jack up at the top (there are wired earbuds in the box too).
We kind of liked the dual-tone backing that the Pixels had before the Pixel 4 arrived, and even though that has fallen by the wayside, these Google phones still have a certain understated elegance to them. Having the power button a slightly different colour is a small but effective trick from previous Pixels, and it’s back again here – the power button is a sort of green-ish white, as far as we can tell. Black is your only colour choice for the phone’s body.
There’s no Pixel 4a XL – though there are rumours that the Pixel 4a 5G coming later in the year will have a larger screen. Overall, Google has done a decent job with the design of the Pixel 4a: phones like the OnePlus Nord and iPhone SE 2020 feel premium to hold, whereas the Pixel 4a feels more ordinary and everyday, but that’s okay. It’s rather happy in its mid-range skin.
Pics-el perfect?
Like the Pixel 3a, the Pixel 4a sticks with a single 12.2MP rear camera, though we’re assuming it’s the slightly updated one found in the Pixel 4 – but there’s no second telephoto lens. In other words, it’s half the camera you get with the Pixel 4, but again Google’s algorithms are working their magic to produce some really great shots.
Shutter speed is responsive and snappy, colours are sharp and bright, dark and light areas are well balanced, and details are well retained even when photos are viewed up close. Once again, Night Sight is the star of the show, producing some almost unbelievable shots in low light if you can hold the camera steady for a couple of seconds – if anything they almost brighten the scene too much in some situations, leaving you with an eerie mix of daylight and nighttime.
As with the Pixel 3, Pixel 3a and Pixel 4 phones before it, the Pixel 4a can take shots of the night sky too. Through a combination of local lockdown rules, cloud cover and light pollution, we haven’t been able to test the feature out so far – but we have previously tested it with the Pixel 4 XL and found it to work well. For astrophotography you will need a tripod or some other prop to keep the phone steady for between two and four minutes.
Speaking of the Pixel 4 XL, we were able to compare it directly with the Pixel 4a in some shots. We found the dual-lens rear camera on the Pixel 4 XL came out on top, as you would
expect – but only some of the time, and not by a huge distance. The Pixel 4a actually comes very close to the flagship in the photography stakes, even when zooming: the softwarebased zoom gets close to the Pixel 4 XL optical zoom in terms of quality.
If you want the very best Pixel camera, get the Pixel 4 or the Pixel 4 XL, but the Pixel 4a gets very close to the same quality for a fraction of the price. It looks as though camera quality is once again going to be a big reason to pick this Google midranger, and it’s definitely one of the best smartphone cameras we’ve seen at this price point – especially if you’re shooting in low light.
Given the time constraints on our phone reviews – and the fact that brand new phones boast brand new batteries that haven’t started to degrade – it’s always hard to give a definitive verdict on battery life at this early stage. What we can say is that the Pixel 4a seems to hold its charge very well, with the 3,140mAh battery still having around half its charge left at the end of each day. In our two-hour video streaming test, the battery dropped from 100% to 85%, which is above average (and equates to more than 12 hours of streaming between charges).
Snappy performer
The Snapdragon 730G is a decent processor, especially with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of (non-expandable) internal storage alongside it – we didn’t notice any kind of slowdown when moving through apps and browser tabs, and the phone can cope with some heavy-duty mobile games too.
Keeping the price down has meant some sacrifices – we’ve mentioned the lack of waterproofing, and there’s
no 5G or support for wireless charging. With 5G now available in most of the big cities in the UK, the Pixel 4a isn’t the most future-proofed phone on the market right now (the Moto G 5G Plus costs even less, and has 5G on board), but 4G should be enough to keep you going for the next two or three years until it’s time to upgrade your phone again.
More than ever, what you’re buying with a Pixel phone is the Google experience: Google Assistant close at hand, instant access to Google apps, and the very latest versions of stock Android as they appear. The Pixel 4a comes running Android 10, but it’s guaranteed to be one of the first phones in the queue when Android 11 rolls out later this year. It even has the cool Now Playing feature of other Pixels, which works like an always-on Shazam, identifying songs as they play in the background.
Google Photos continues to get better and better, and will store all your photos and videos in the cloud for free if you don’t mind them being downsized a little. To keep them at their original sizes, you can pay for more Google One storage once your free 15GB allocation has been used up – every Pixel 4a purchase comes with three months of 100GB storage for free, though presumably if you use that up within the allotted time period you then don’t have much choice but to start paying.
Pure of heart
The Pixel 4a is almost exactly what we expected – a modest upgrade on the Pixel 3a, and a more affordable alternative to the Pixel 4. It really is one for the Google fans: Android is clean and bloat-free, Assistant is easier to access (and more capable than ever) and you get Pixel exclusives like Night Sight for the camera, and the Recorder app that can convert spoken audio to text in real time. It’s Google’s mobile operating system, its apps, and its services in their purest form – something you can’t really say about other Android phones on the market.
If screen size and quality, processor speed or 5G connectivity are more important priorities for you, then there are better phones around at this price point right now. It’s a segment of the market that’s getting more and more competitive with every passing month, and there are plenty more phones to come in 2020 yet. The Pixel 4a is up against some strong rivals, so don’t spend any more on this new Google phone until you’ve had a good look around at what else is out.
The strengths of the Pixel 4a are the same as they always have been for the Pixel range: an excellent camera and arguably the best version of Android around (as well as fast system updates). Add to that respectable performance and battery life, and a phone that’s well designed in an unflashy kind of way, and the Pixel 4a is an interesting new proposition in the 2020 smartphone market.