OnePlus 7 vs Google Pixel 3a
Not to mention the Samsung Galaxy S10e _ full tests
SCORE PRICE £333 (£399 inc VAT) from store.google.com
Google’s Pixel phones have long represented the pinnacle of what Android can accomplish, but those with longer memories will recall the company’s Nexus range. Much admired and much missed, these provided a clean OS for an affordable price.
Now, Google is back with a phone for the masses, bringing the top-end camera Pixel phones are famous for at a cheaper price.
The 3a looks identical to its pricier Pixel stablemates and overlays Android 9 with the same slick Pixel launcher. The differences only become obvious when you dig deeper. You won’t find one of Qualcomm’s top-end mobile processors at this price, with the Pixel 3a using a less
powerful Snapdragon 670 chipset. And that’s not the only cutback.
Subtle cutbacks
The Pixel 3a keeps the same two-tone rear of its (slightly) older flagship counterparts. This incorporates a smoother section at the top of the phone, which surrounds the rearfacing camera module, softening to a grippier, silky matte finish towards the bottom. This isn’t a glass and aluminium combo, though: the new phone is instead constructed entirely from polycarbonate plastic.
That doesn’t mean it feels cheap. The Pixel 3a is a delight to hold and use, fitting comfortably in your palm. Google’s circular fingerprint reader sits in the same location on the back of the phone and there’s a USB-C charging port on the bottom, flanked by a pair of speaker grilles.
Google’s “Active Edge” feature also makes another appearance, allowing you to activate Google Assistant if you squeeze the bottom portion of the phone. This uses machine learning to tell the difference between a proper squeeze and an accidental one, but I find this feature redundant, especially when you can just say “Hey Google” to awaken the assistant.
Which brings me to the phone’s short list of drawbacks. To cut costs, Google has stripped the Pixel 3a of officially rated dust or waterproofing, and there isn’t a protective layer of Gorilla Glass fixed to the front of the phone’s screen, either. Instead, the
Pixel 3a opts for the lesser-used Dragontrail to protect the display from scratches.
As there’s no glass rear, Google has also abandoned wireless charging. Still, the Pixel 3a does include a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top edge of the phone, something sorely missed on the regular model.
Top-end display
Aside from measuring an extra 0.1in across the diagonal, the Pixel 3a’s display remains unchanged. It’s a lovely-looking 2,220 x 1,080 OLED panel, with a pin-sharp pixel density of 441ppi. The Pixel 3a has three display modes to choose from, with the phone’s “natural” screen profile being the most colour-accurate. Our calibrator found that it covered an excellent 95.9% of the sRGB colour gamut, with an impressive average Delta E of 0.91.
These figures translate to a phone screen that’s among the best you can buy, with colour performance on par with what you would expect from very expensive, professional-grade monitors. It’s not the same story when it comes to the phone’s “boosted” and “adaptive” display modes, which tend to oversaturate colours across the palette.
Brightness isn’t too shabby, either. The Pixel 3a can hit a peak luminance of 416cd/m², meaning it’s readable in all but the brightest conditions – even if it’s a long way behind Samsung’s dazzlingly bright OLED panels.
Mid-range speed
The Pixel 3a comes equipped with Qualcomm’s newest mid-range chipset, the octa-core Snapdragon 670. This is a 10nm architecture CPU with a clock speed of 2GHz, so you can’t expect the performance of the Pixel 3’s Snapdragon 845, which hit a blazingly fast 2.8GHz. In other respects, it’s much the same, with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of internal storage, which sadly can’t be expanded.
The internal sacrifices don’t translate to a slow phone. Yes, the speed graphs on p71 make it clear that the Pixel 3a isn’t as speedy as its flagship rivals, but neither are the gaps as drastic as I’d expected. Subjectively at least, the Pixel 3a feels just as nippy as the Pixel 3.
It makes light work of day-to-day Android tasks and has no problems when switching between multiple applications. Even graphically intensive games such as PUBG Mobile and Shadowgun Legends – which both defaulted to high graphics settings – ran without a hitch.
The Pixel 3a’s battery has increased in size to 3,000mAh. That’s only slightly bigger than the battery in the regular Pixel 3, but when you add the not-so-power-hungry Snapdragon 670 into the mix, you get a phone that lasts longer on a single charge. Our in-house video-rundown test, which plays a looped video at a standard display brightness of 170cd/m² and switches off all data connections, reached 15hrs 7mins before the battery level dropped to zero.
Same stunning camera
With the Pixel 3’s excellent camera attracting superlative-packed reviews since its launch last year, it’s lovely to see Google’s fancy camera tech trickle down into the mainstream.
The Pixel 3a’s camera hardware is identical, with a single 12.2-megapixel lens and a wide f/1.8 aperture with dual-pixel autofocus and optical image stabilisation (OIS), but it lacks Google’s own Pixel Visual Core add-on. This neat chip boosts image processing on Google’s top-end Pixel phones, improving the quality of HDR and night-time images.
Still, even the most discerning of eyeballs will struggle to tell apart the images shot by the two phones. No matter the lighting conditions, photos look terrific, with superb dynamic range and a pleasingly neutral colour palette. Google’s Night Sight shooting
“The Google Pixel 3a costs a bargain £399, which is stonkingly good value for money for a handset with so few cutbacks”
mode impresses yet again when it comes to low-light photography, using AI to illuminate shots in the same way as the flash.
Google also continues to place faith in its HDR+ algorithm, which captures a series of images every time the shutter is pressed, stitching them all together to create the best possible image. Generally speaking, images taken with “HDR+ enhanced” during testing managed to balance light levels much more effectively than HDR shooting modes on other phones.
Video recording is also impressive. While you’re limited to 30fps, both 4K and 1080p footage is crisp and detailed, and, whatever the recording resolution, image stabilisation is rock solid.
Killer price
The best thing, though, is the price. Rather than nudge alarmingly close to the four-figure mark, as the Pixel 3 range does, the Pixel 3a costs a bargain £399. That’s stonkingly good value for money for a handset with so few cutbacks. It’s true that Google has stepped into a saturated area of the market, but it does so with success.
Naturally, there are temptations if you’re willing to pay more. Xiaomi’s Mi 9 is perhaps its biggest rival, oneupping Google’s efforts by including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 855 processor and a generous 8GB of RAM – but it costs £499. And don’t ignore the Pixel 3a XL ( see p72).
Google’s return to the mid-range is a winning move for the company. The Pixel 3a is the antithesis of what we’ve come to expect from cheaper variants of flagship phones and is our top choice if you have £400 to spend.
SPECIFICATIONS Octa-core 2GHz/1.6GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 670 4GB RAM Adreno 615 graphics 5.6in OLED screen, 1,080 x 2,220 resolution 64GB storage 3.5mm audio jack 12.2MP rear camera 8MP front camera 802.11ac Wi-Fi Bluetooth 5 NFC USB-C connector 3,000mAh battery Android 9 70.1 x 8.2 x 151.3mm (WDH) 147g
1yr warranty