Do the small upgrades on the Pixel 4a make it worth buying?
Each year Google launches a new Pixel flagship smartphone that provides great software and camera experience with powerful hardware under the hood. However, those flagships are priced much higher so Google last year came up with Pixel 3a (Review) which was a much affordable Pixel smartphone with a great camera and software.
The Pixel 3a only could provide good software and camera experience compared to many competitors in the market. But in terms of hardware, design, etc. it was not so good, so, this year Google has launched a successor to it, the Pixel 4a, and has made some improvements.
The Pixel 4 did not make its way to India, so now the Pixel 4a is aiming to take the spot by offering not a flagship, but a balanced experience in terms of hardware and software at a lower price. It has a newer design, has a Snapdragon 730G chipset, a single camera, and some more.
This Pixel 4a is now the latest most affordable Pixel smartphone and is it worth buying over its rivals in the market?
Let's find out in the full review.
Google Pixel 4a Design:
The Pixel 4a almost has a similar design to the Pixel 4. In the front, there is a punch hole cut for the front camera to the top left corner of the display with minimum bezels to the sides of the display. The earpiece lies on top of the display and moving to the back, it is very hard to distinguish Pixel 4 from the Pixel 4a except for the back-mounted fingerprint scanner.
The higher-priced Pixel 4 has support for wireless charging, the back is made up of glass and metal, there is an IP68 rating which all of these features are lacking on the Pixel 4a. Instead, the Pixel 4a has gone for a matte polycarbonate back to keep costs low and the rear-mounted fingerprint scanner makes a return.
The new square housing for the camera looks good with an LED flash in that module whereas Pixel 4 has an ultrawide camera also. Coming to the sides, on the right, there is a single SIM card slot that houses a single Nano-SIM and has an additional eSIM. To the left of the smartphone, there are the volume buttons and a power button.
The power button has a mint-green accent to it and feels tactile while clicking. This position is perfect for the thumb to rest on it, so it makes it very compact to use as the weight is 143 grams and easier to hold. On top of the smartphone, there is a 3.5mm headphone jack and a secondary noise-canceling microphone.
To the bottom, there is a USB Type-C 3.1 port and two vents out of which one is a loudspeaker and the other is the primary microphone. The 3.5mm headphone jack is a big return as the Pixel 4 did not have it and it is good to see on the Pixel 4a, so all the earphones can be plugged in for media consumption.
So on an overall basis, Google has kept the minimalistic design that includes a strong plastic body, a rear-mounted fingerprint scanner, and the 3.5mm headphone jack with Pixel 4, and also it resembles the look of the Pixel 4a.
Google Pixel 4a Display:
On the front, the Pixel 4a has a fresh new design as it is a full-screen display which is a big departure from the Pixel 3a's large bezels on the top as well as at the bottom of the display. The screen size is 5.8 inches that is 0.2 inches larger than the Pixel 3a and is protected by Gorilla Glass 3 which lets it down.
There are almost no bezels around the display and here you get a 5.8 inches Full HD+ (1080x2340 pixels) OLED display with a screen to body ratio of 19.5:9 that looks brighter and the color reproduction is excellent since it is an OLED panel. The viewing angles are good on the Pixel 4a but not as good as the Pixel 4.
Many smartphones are offering a 90Hz or a 120Hz display, but this is not the case with the Pixel 4a. You are getting only the standard 60Hz display. The screen legibility is good under direct sunlight and the Adaptive Brightness works really well.
Like the Samsung mid-range and flagships, you also get an Always-On display on the Pixel 4a that shows the time, weather, date, battery level, and also notifications coming from third-party applications or system applications.
The Pixel 4a has support for HDR10 and has Widevine L1 so that you can stream HD contents from Netflix, Prime, etc. and here with the Pixel 4a there are three different color profiles that include Adaptive, Boosted, and Natural where Adaptive is set by default to fill up the DCI-P3 color gamut.
The new look of the display with that OLED panel is good for media consumption but the lack of a higher refresh rate lets it down a bit.
Google Pixel 4a Performance:
The Pixel 4a will not make a rush in terms of performance as it is powered by a mid-range Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G chipset which does seem a bit downgrade compared to the Pixel 4a 5G that has a Snapdragon 765G chipset which has the support for 5G.
All tasks are handled easily whether it is multitasking, loading web pages, and scrolling through webpages, all felt smooth and easy to use. In terms of gaming, the Adreno 618 could easily run all normal to heavy games like Call of Duty, Asphalt 9 without any issue.
When the graphics were set in HD while playing Call of Duty, there were some noticeable frame drops noticed after prolonged gaming for 3-4 hours, and the back was slightly warm due to the absence of any cooling system.
There is only one variant available with the Pixel 4a that is the 6GB LPDDR4X RAM and 128GB storage. The storage speeds have been upgraded to UFS 2.1 from the eMMC 5.1 on the Pixel 3a. Though there is 6GB RAM it is seen that the application loading takes some amount of time but the RAM management has been improved over the Pixel 3a.
When compared to the competition, the performance does feel a bit short as the OnePlus Nord (Review) with the Snapdragon 765G chipset performs better. Moving to benchmarks, on Antutu v8, the Pixel 4a scored 250635 and on Geekbench 5.1, in single and multi-core tests was 553 and 1626 respectively.
The performance is not the flagship one but still pretty good and will get most of the work done.
Google Pixel 4a Software:
The Pixel 4a runs on Google's Stock Android built on top of Android 10. This is one area where all the Pixel smartphones impress as you get a very clean and bloatware-free software experience. There are any third-party applications pre-installed.
Since it is an Android 10 smartphone, you get a system-wide dark mode, Android 10 navigation gestures, Digital Wellbeing that shows how much battery has been consumed by an individual application and the improved Google assistant makes a hands-free experience as the voice recognition has been improved over the Pixel 3a.
There are some very good Google-specific applications like the Personal Safety app that lets you save emergency contacts, a screen recorder that can record almost all activities on the smartphone, and Live Captions which shows the captions automatically while listening to songs or watching a video.
The new Google Assistant glows from the bottom of the smartphone and also add smart home controls to perform some actions. Since it is a Google device, you are assured three years of Android updates and consistent software and security patches.
The Pixel 4a now has also received the Android 11 update. So in terms of software experience, the Pixel smartphones excel and it is nothing different from the Pixel 4a.
Google Pixel 4a Camera:
The Pixel smartphones have always excelled in the camera department as we had seen with the Pixel 3a and 4. Like the Pixel 3a, you only get a single camera that is 12.2MP which is similar to the one found on the Pixel 3a but has an f/1.7 aperture to capture in a better light and the quality of images is also better.
In daylight, the images have excellent details with punchier colors and a good dynamic range. There is no noise in the background and the contrast is well maintained. The color temperature looks cooler and the exposure is well maintained in the background.
This is where the Pixel 4a shines as the HDR works really good and it supports Google SuperZoom that lets it take 2x zoom images with a good amount of details. However, these zoomed images do have a fair bit of noise but Google's algorithm for software processing and the presence of OIS makes it much more appealing.
Moving to low-light images, there is plenty of detail with punchier colors. The dynamic range is good but the colors do look a bit washed out and the subjects do look a tad softer. Turning on the Night Sight, things change completely.
The noise is reduced or we can say not present at all and the dynamic range is excellent. The Pixel 4a's Night Sight is much better than other smartphones' Night Mode. The OIS helps in capturing more light and the exposure is well maintained with good color saturation in the background.
The Pixel 4a comes with a new feature called astrophotography which was first seen on the Pixel 4. This mode takes clear night shots especially stars and moon in the night. So first is to find a night with a clear sky with stars and point the camera of the Pixel 4a towards it.
To get a perfect shot, you need to keep it on an object such as the tripod stand to get that steady shot with no noise and it will take 1-3 minutes for processing that particular image. This is only applicable if the sky is clear and there is no noise in the background.
Another big disappointment with the Pixel 4a is the lack of an ultrawide camera and a macro camera. The ultrawide camera does let the smartphone take an image with a larger field of view which the Pixel 4a lacks and the macro camera photography skills can be achieved only by focusing close to the object using the main camera.
The macro images do have a good amount of detail and the noise is also low when compared to the dedicated macro camera on other smartphones. Moving to portraits, Pixel 4a does a good job with edge detection and after taking a shot, you can adjust the background blur and also tweak the images with some new effects.
The dynamic range is good with the portraits but there is a loss of detail when zoomed into it. Portraits are not the strength of Pixel 4a and the competitors offer better results.
On the front, the Pixel 4a gets an 8MP f/2.0 single camera which takes really good selfies with plenty of detail and has a good dynamic range. The colors look a bit artificial and since it is just an 8MP snapper it does not capture much many of the subjects in the background.
In terms of portraits, the front camera does a good job but the dynamic is not so good and the background blur works better. There is no front ultrawide camera that was seen on the OnePlus Nord. The portraits need some improvement regarding the contrast and some amount of noise present.
On the rear, the Pixel 4a supports 4K video at 30fps, not 4K at 60fps due to the Snapdragon 730G limitation. The video footage comes out to be good with punchier colors and no noise present. Switching to 1080p at 60fps, the videos have excellent dynamic range and the colors look well saturated and the contrast is good too.
On the front, the videos come out good but the noise is most prominently present and the stabilization is not so good. You are restricted to only 1080p at 30fps whereas the competitors like the OnePlus Nord support 4K video at 60fps and have larger 32MP cameras that capture more details instead of the 8MP one on the Pixel 4a.
Except for the front camera, overall, the Pixel 4a provides an excellent camera experience but it does lack some extra cameras and if you purely want only the better main camera experience, the Pixel 4a is the one to go for.
Google Pixel 4a Battery Life:
The Pixel 4a has a larger 3140mAh battery which has more capacity than the 2800mAh battery on Pixel 4. With Google's optimization and the larger battery, the Pixel 4a can easily last for one single day with normal usage, and with heavy usage, it can last more than a day with some juice left.
There is no option for a high refresh rate, so nothing to complain about when it comes to battery life. There are some power-saving modes that can save a whole lot of battery and the standard screen on time is 5-6 hours considering the efficient chipset and the display is small.
With the Adaptive Battery turned on, you will get a full day of battery backup and the always-on display is turned on, the battery can easily last for one day but needs a quick charge at night.
You do get an 18W fast charger bundled inside the box which takes the Pixel 4a from 0 to 100 percent within 1hour and 35 minutes which is fast but slower than the Warp Charge 30T on the OnePlus Nord or the 65W SuperDart charging on the Realme 7 Pro.
It also supports USB Type-C PD charging which means you can achieve faster-charging speeds by connecting with power banks or any other smartphone which has a larger capacity battery. It does miss on wireless charging provided on the Pixel 4.
With Google's skin and a standard 60Hz display, Pixel 4a provides good battery life.
Google Pixel 4a Audio Quality:
The Pixel 4a is one of the very few smartphones to have a 3.5mm headphone jack as many of the smartphone manufactureres are removing it as with the case on the OnePlus Nord.
The audio through it is really good and when it comes to loudness levels, the speaker is adequately loud and not so loud as the Pixel 4.
Still, the earpiece with the loudspeaker grille at the bottom together acts as stereo speakers that are adequately loud.
Verdict:
On an overall basis, the Google Pixel 4a offers a great software experience with a good camera and battery life. It has a good OLED display, a sizeable battery with fast charging and and comes with pretty good internals that is a Snapdragon 730G chipset.
However, there are some drawbacks like the lack of a higher refresh rate display, no ultrawide or a macro camera, smaller display size when compared to the competition and a cheaper build quality. But still if you compare it to the Pixel 3a, its predecessor it has quite a lot of improvements.
It brings in a new design, the Snapdragon 730G chipset is more powerful than the Snapdragon 670, the rear camera has got some improvements as it gets a lower f/1.7 aperture and comes with faster UFS 2.1 storage. When compared with the OnePlus Nord, the Pixel 4a is one of the few devices that provides better primary camera performance and also faster security and software updates.
If you see from an overall perspective, the Pixel 4a provides all the simplicty found in a smartphone that is good performance, a compact display, a good camera, good performance and battery life with faster and better software experience. Google has put a great product and this will be a great buy in the market.
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