Pixel 4A Review - When Google Goes Small By C4ETech

You know what gets old really fast, lugging around a phone like the lg g8x. Yes, it's got the dual screens and all, but once the novelty wears off you're left with a brick in your pocket, which is why I started rummaging through the phones here at office, looking for something else to daily drive and review, of course, and having spent a week with it here are my thoughts on the Pixel 4a. Now, when you switch over to a pixel device, you're not expecting the greatest hardware, the pixel 5 in fact comes with a snapdragon 765 g. What you do get, though, is a very well optimized, android experience and on that front the Pixel 4a delivers with the snapdragon 730 under the hood. The Pixel 4a isn't the fastest phone around. It probably won't any speed tests or benchmarks either when it comes to real life usage, it doesn't disappoint.

In my week with the Pixel 4a, I didn't notice, any lags or frame drops, android 11 kept chugging along without a hiccup and thanks to the six gigs of ram on board. Switching between apps and multitasking in general was a breeze. You know what else is a breeze getting subscribed to c4e tech, so go ahead. Do that now I know hit that bell icon as well. It really does help us out a ton coming back to the Pixel 4a.

The gaming experience does leave a little to be desired. It is smooth for the most part but game for a long time, and the plastic bag does heat up a bit. In fact, something quite unusual is that the back of the phone like this area, it got heated up quite a bit, even while I was on call now. I don't know if this is something that's wrong with my unit, because I have used Joe VoLTE on a lot of other phones before in that same exact place, and none of them have exhibited this strange behavior. So the Pixel 4a isn't going to blow you away with its performance, in fact, there's a few niggles here and there, but the overall experience I'd rate it very highly android 11 comes with all the bells and whistles that most people would want.

We have a dark mode, an ambient display and my favorite swipe up and down on the fingerprint sensor to control the notification state. Like it's so handy, also, side note the fingerprint sensor itself is quite fast and works well, but there is no face unlock back to the software, though, and Google's special features deserves a mention here. Like the now playing and the free google photo storage, the latter becoming an even more important factor. Now that the unlimited storage and google photos is going away for good, and then there are the intangibles like in a lot of our reviews. You guys would ask us: would this phone receive updates? When would it receive updates? Well with the pixel, we are guaranteed three years of update till August 2023, and yes, this includes major android version upgrades.

I recently did a video where I compared a 20 000 rupee phones with the latest iPhone 12 Pro max and the takeaway from the comments there was. A lot of people opt for iPhones, simply because of how long apple supports them. Well, we don't get five years on this side of the pond, but Google does offer three. And yes, since this is a pixel device, it's one of the fastest phones to get major android upgrades security, patches and whatnot. So an ad free, secure OS, that's one of the main draws with the pixel, the other one.

That's the cameras. Now 2020 has been the year of multi-camera setups. We have seen anything from two to four rear cameras on smartphones, not just on flagships, but on budget devices. Well, Google has decided to buff the trend: the Pixel 4a sports, a single camera, 12.2 megapixel, dual pixel autofocus with an optically stabilized, f, 1.7 lens. So yes, no fancy, 64 or 108 megapixel sensor here, but with photos that look this good, the Pixel 4a clearly doesn't need more hardware.

I mean here's how good this camera is. It obviously performs better than all the phones in its segment here. It is, for example, against the OnePlus note. Furthermore, it outperforms the nod in almost all aspects, sharper pictures with better dynamic range. Now, if we switch to 48 megapixel mode on the node, it does have some better details in some cases, just because of the higher pixel count.

But overall the pixel dominates the segment and here's the thing. These are side by side samples of the Pixel 4a against the iPhone 12. Yes, it is that good that it can put up a fight with even the latest iPhone look at the details on the fur of the cow here and how good the dynamic range is that we have the leaves exposed perfectly under low light. Well, we all know how good night side is just have a look at these images. Is helps in bumping up the exposure timings leading to some great vibrant colors, even when there's very low amount of light available and that spills onto over the video side of things as well.

The Pixel 4a can record at 4k 30 fps. The footage is crisp with excellent dynamic range, and the best thing here is the autofocus. Look: how quick and seamless it is. Generally, I gloss over selfie cameras, but with the Pixel 4a, I have to again praise google for just how good these pictures look, especially considering that they're coming from an 8, megapixel snapper as usual. The portraits look perfect too.

Not that we'd expect anything else from the pixel. In fact, if this were any other phone, the camera UI would be chock-full of features. Now, I'm not hating on that, because hey some of you might actually find them useful, but you have to love the simple minimalistic approach to the camera UI here. I only wish that google had included an ultra white snapper into the mix, like we have seen in the reviews of the pixel 5 everyone raving about how good the photos from the ultrawide are, and it'll be kind of cool. If Google had included them here, especially since, if you're in India, and you want to buy the latest generation pixel, the 4a is pretty much the only choice, pretty much like if you're looking for a compact phone in India.

This is the only decent choice. Of course, we do have the Apple iPhone 12 mini, but that starts at 70 000 rupees, and if you want a 128 gig version, then that's going to be 5000 rupees more. On the other hand, the Pixel 4a comes with 128 gigs of storage and is modestly priced at 32, 000 rupees. Of course. This is no flagship and the place where it shows that most is the all plastic, build to be fair.

There's a lot to love about this, build it's small, that's the main reason I switched to this from the lg g8x. It's also incredibly light just 143 grams. The rounded edges mean it fits nicely in half and the matte finish on. The back doesn't pick up that many fingerprints or scratches, but I still kind of miss the matte glass feel of earlier pixels and the overall design while functional is a bit boring. At least we have the accented power button on here, but hey I can live with boring as long as the basics are done.

Right and oh boy has Google nailed them here, like we have a headphone jack, it can be a dealbreaker for some people and the Pixel 4a has it. It also has OLED something people really want. Nowadays, the panel is 5.81 inches, there's no ugly notch. Instead, we have a tiny cutout and, most importantly, the bezels here are really thin, leading to an overall footprint that I would say, borders on the edge of one-handed usage like I have normal-sized hands, and I found myself using the Pixel 4a one handed quite a lot. Circling back to the display, though we get yet another look at the just adequate philosophy that google seems to have built this phone on.

We get OLED, which means inky, dark, blacks and bright, beautiful colors. The brightness is enough to be legible outdoors, but not enough to keep up with, say the OnePlus knot. Oh, and on that topic we have 60 hertz here, not 90. Of course, when you cut down the size and make a slim and light phone there's, always one casualty battery life. We have a 3140 William unit here, and this is one place where I felt the Pixel 4a was not adequate.

I am a heavy user and the pixel 4 barely made it through the day. For me, on particularly heavy days with Call of Duty gaming sessions and a lot of camera testing, I had to charge the pixel 48 just before I hit the bed now to be fair. It did help me sleep better by cutting down on my nocturnal Reddit browsing, but I can't really give google credit for that. They include the chargers, 18 watts and a quick half hour charge gets back up to around 50 juice. A full charge takes over one and a half hours, though.

So, if the battery life is something you are okay with, then the Pixel 4a comes with a lot of goodies, excellent camera, but cameras. If you count the selfie shooter an OLED panel, dual speakers, yep google has managed to cram that in here a headphone jack and a very well optimized experience. It isn't the fastest in the price range we have the iq3 for that it doesn't have 90hz or 5g like the not there's. No flashy camera features like the x3 super zoom, but what it does have is the pixel experience in a very easy to wheel form factor. So, if you're looking for that, 32 000 rupees might seem like a fair price to pay for others, though you'd get a lot more hardware for your money by going with something else.

So that's been my experience with the Pixel 4a. Do let me know in the comments down below what you felt about it? Also, if you're already a pixel user I'd like to hear from you what made you choose the pixel over some other device. Let's talk everything pixel in the comments down below, as always as share comment subscribe. I know turn on notification by hitting that bell icon. If you haven't yet thanks a lot for watching till the end guys have a nice one cheers.

Source : C4ETech