£349. Straight away, that price is a headline feature. Although just because it’s a lot cheaper than an iPhone 11 Pro Max, doesn’t mean it’s any less of a device.
Looks can be deceiving, and in this case they are, but for the right reasons: for £349, it comes with a 5.81″ inch 1080p OLED at 443 PPI, 128GB storage & 6GB RAM, stereo speakers and a 3.5mm headphone port.
It may only have 1 rear camera, but it’s backed by the best software in smartphone computational photography – as we’ve come to expect from Pixel’s. The sample images I’ve seen so far, taken on Pixel 4a review units, are on a par with the much more expensive, £1,174 iPhone 11 Pro Max.
This is what I meant in my previous blogs, when I said there are other more compelling options, available from other manufacturers, in 2020. And this one is right there, bang smack pow, at my ideal price.
Pixel 4a: Analysis
The Pixel 4a is not the best, most perfect phone out there – in fact, most fans & reviewers have already drawn attention to the Snapdragon 730G chipset as being a minor blow, considering the £379 OnePlus Nord ships with the Snapdragon 765G – but as I’m now looking for a more budget-friendly device, I’d be wrong to not even consider it.
To be honest, the Pixel 4a is very appealing. Not least because of the photography side of things, but also its size. I’ve already discussed in detail how my Galaxy S9 Plus is just a bit too big, and I’d really like to downsize – but without too much of a downgrade on the specs, if I can help it.
I realise that, because my budget is now lower than before, I may have to make some compromises, and with the Pixel 4a, there are a few of them.
Pixel, No Equaliser?
Firstly, there doesn’t appear to be a built-in music Equaliser on the Pixel 4a. It’s as a result of the simplicity of stock Android on a Pixel phone, but to me it’s a major annoyance.
The PowerAmp music app came to the rescue last time this was an issue, on my HTC Desire Eye, but on my 2 Galaxy phones, an Equaliser has been a system feature, baked-in to the Settings menu, and has had me covered for movies as well as YouTube.
For videos on the Pixel 4a, I’d need an extra Bass Booster or Equaliser app – using up more of that 128GB storage than I’d like to. It also means there’ll be some disparity between the sound of music & the sound of videos, but I guess it’s a compromise I’ll have to live with.
My Lumia 820 (a Windows Phone), my HTC Wildfire & Nokia X2-00 all had their own Equalisers – albeit, they weren’t as extensive as the ones on my Galaxy S7 or Galaxy S9 Plus, but they were there anyway.
Discounting the 2 years when my HTC Desire Eye was my ‘daily driver,’ I’ve spent 8 years of the past decade using built-in audio Equalisers on phones. Some may say third party offerings are better & offer more features, but I’ve found that a system default option will be switched on all the time, and cover all types of media – music, videos, radio & podcasts.
If you’re like me & switch your phone off at night, the disadvantage of third-party EQ/booster apps is that you have to manually activate them by opening said apps after booting. Unlike built-in system Equalisers, they’re not automatically active from when you first boot up the phone.
Not having this feature on the Pixel 4a is going to take some getting used to; also, it inserts an extra step to me enjoying my media content. It’s not impossible, but it is a compromise.
No Micro SD card slot?
Another compromise of the Pixel 4a is there’s no expandable storage. There’s no Micro SD Card slot, meaning I’m stuck with just the 128GB of internal storage.
To be fair, this is a problem that’s existed on all Pixel phones since the OG Pixel landed in 2016, and even before that, the Nexus devices also had no expandable storage (e.g. LG Nexus 5X, Huawei Nexus 6P).
As well as the 128GB internal storage on my S9 Plus, it has the added advantage of a Micro SD Card slot, which I’ve used to double the storage with a 128GB Micro SD Card – bringing my total storage to just under 256GB.
Having a Micro SD card slot is a feature I’ve used on phones since I got my Samsung E250 back in 2007. My Sony Ericsson W910i had an M2 card slot, and my Nokia X2-00 after that had a Micro SD card slot. That’s 13 long years (more than a decade!) of using expandable storage, so to suddenly lose it would be more of an issue for me than most people.
I’d say that, of all the useful features of a smartphone, a Micro SD card slot is the one I use the most. For me, a smartphone is a PC in my pocket, and since the late 1990’s, I’ve used 3.5″ floppy disks, CD-RW’s, DVD-RW’s, USB flash drives, & Portable HDD’s as a way of expanding my computer’s available storage. It’s not just a feature I’ve used for a couple of years – it’s something I’m so used to, that it’s like fluently speaking a second language.
A Micro SD card slot on a phone or tablet, means I can just slot the card in, with all my media pre-loaded onto it, and my device will read all of that content immediately, without any hassles of copying over my music from my PC.
I’m looking at you, iTunes, and my 4th gen iPod Touch.
Having expandable storage means the internal storage of the phone is reserved just for apps & games.
To take this feature away, means I’ll need to adjust to having less space to use. I’m sure I can adapt, as the Pixel 4a will still have the USB On-The-Go (USB OTG) feature, meaning I can plug-in a USB pen drive & back up photos & videos from the phone, but again, it’s something so ingrained in me, that not having it available will be a strange feeling.
I know why it’s not available: so that Google, like Apple, can push onto us their Google One subscription service that expands Cloud storage. Thing is, I’m not a big user of Cloud storage – it’s something I’ve only really used occasionally, as I’m so used to using local storage options.
To be fair, I used to only have 32GB of internal storage on Galaxy S7, 14GB on my HTC Desire Eye, 8GB on my Nokia Lumia 820, and even less than that on my earlier phones – but in each case, I also had expandable storage, so I could take more photos & videos than my phone was able to store internally.
Apps & games take up much more storage nowadays, so available storage is something I’m aware of now more than ever. Having that extra storage on hand, just in case I need it, is a bonus that I can’t really live without.
For example, even though music streaming is now a big thing, I also only listen to that occasionally. Most of my music is stored locally, and comes from ripped CD’s. I have just under 35GB of music on the 128GB Micro SD card in my S9 Plus.
Unless I cull some of that collection down, on the Pixel 4a that would theoretically leave me with about 93GB of storage to use for photos & videos, apps & games. Again, it’s not impossible, but with less space, I’d have to be more careful with how many apps I have installed, so I have enough room for camera snaps while out on holiday.
How the Pixel 4a fares against the competition:
Currently, the only other phone at this price range that I’ve been considering, is the Motorola Moto G 5G Plus. It’s name could do with a rethink, but it’s an almost perfect phone in my opinion, and unlike the Pixel 4a, it comes with expandable storage.
It’s also cheaper at the moment, here in the UK – £295 on Amazon for the 64GB model with 4GB RAM, or £374 for the 128GB with 6GB RAM.
That more expensive model of the Moto G 5G Plus pits it right against the OnePlus Nord, which I think it beats: at £379 for the base model OnePlus Nord, it only comes with 64GB storage, 6GB RAM but no expandable storage.
The OnePlus Nord also lacks a headphone port, and its measly 2MP macro camera hasn’t reviewed well against the 5MP macro shooter on the Moto – as per GSMArena’s review.
I’m sorry if you’re a OnePlus fan, but for me personally that’s way too many compromises for a device that’s supposedly the BEST ‘flagship killer.’
Also, unlike the Pixel 4a, the Moto G 5G Plus even comes with an ultra wide-angle camera alongside that macro camera – although no telephoto like the 2x optical zoomer on my S9 Plus – wrapped up in a gorgeous body.
To get the ultrawide camera, I’d need to look at the 4a’s bigger siblings, the Pixel 4a 5G and the Pixel 5.
The Moto, however, has some half decent specs for its low price: an ultrawide selfie camera, 3.5mm headphone port, NFC, FM Radio, 5,000mAh battery, 20W Fast (wired) Charging, 90Hz refresh rate, HDR, and a Snapdragon 765 chipset.
But, there’s one big problem with the Moto G 5G Plus: its size. It has a 6.7″ screen, which is 0.5″ bigger than my S9 Plus. Unfortunately, that means it’s just too big for me, and despite punching above its weight with its impressive specs, it means it is no longer a contender to be my next phone.
Pixel Camera: Software vs Hardware
In the Pixel 4a’s defence, it’s one and only rear camera is the same 12.2MP f/1.7 sensor that’s been on every Pixel phone since the Pixel 3 – and little has changed in the camera hardware since the original Pixel dropped in 2016.
While that may sound bad – in tech, even 1 year is seen as an era – Google has focused on increasing the performance of its camera software over time.
It’s the same model that Apple uses on its iPhone’s. Instead of massive changes to the camera hardware, they make incremental changes to the software. And it clearly works: Apple is a trillion-dollar company.
Also, until phone makers can overcome the physical limitations of smartphones, there’s no way we’ll see DSLR-style camera sensors on smartphones. The bigger sensors on DSLR’s let in more light to the camera, which means more data per image, and results in better image quality. It’s why DSLR’s & Mirrorless cameras continue to outperform smartphones.
Without a radical rethink of smartphone design, there’s just not enough physical space to accommodate a Full-Frame 35mm sensor. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a thicker phone in my pocket, if the extra thickness was to make room for a 35mm sensor on the rear.
In the meantime, the best way to make smartphones the DSLR in your pocket, is with software optimisation. The Pixel 4a may share same camera hardware as the Pixel 3, but since the Pixel 3’s launch in 2018, the photo processing algorithms will have become that much better, leading to better image quality on the Pixel 4a.
Even without the cameras, in the last few years we’ve reached a plateau moment in the age of smartphone hardware development. Rapid evolutionary upgrades have made way for incremental updates, and people are keeping their phones for longer: smartphones are becoming a victim of their own success.
You only have to look at Apple’s iPhone 12 launch event, on 13 October 2020, for confirmation. MKBHD’s reaction tweet perfectly sums up the new iPhones:
That’s why the software behind smartphone cameras is more important than the hardware.
Smartphone makers can sing and dance as much as they want about having 108 megapixel cameras on their phones, but without the software to back that up, they’re next to useless. They might as well be 5MP cameras with a fancy ‘108MP’ logo.
In the same time that the cheaper brands have spent warring over whose phone has the most megapixels, Google’s been consistently refining the image processing of their Pixel phones.
Back to the Pixel 4a
The Pixel 4a’s camera also comes with an astrophotography camera mode, as well as a spectacular Night Mode.
The Pixel 4a may not have an ultrawide lens, but it does have a Panorama camera mode. While obviously this is designed to capture panoramic views, I’ve found it’s a useful tool for also capturing more of a scene, especially inside a building, when you haven’t got an ultrawide lens.
I’ve used the Panorama modes in this way on my HTC Desire Eye, Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S9 Plus when trying to capture a wide-angle photo. Rotate the phone to portrait, and capture away. The Photo-Sphere modes of old were perfect for this kind of thing, but they’ve sort of been phased out, leaving Panorama modes as the next best thing.
I hear you, it sounds weird! But, a panorama shot is a half-decent compromise when you have no ultrawide-angle lens to utilise.
– Chris JK
KPH tech blog 
Leave a comment