At less than $500, the new Google Pixel 4a is the best budget Android phone you can buy today

It’s a bit messy right now for Google. With the current global pandemic hitting their supply lines, the Pixel 4a — a phone that was supposed to be launched much earlier in 2020 — was finally launched today (Aug 4).

It gets messier. Alongside the launch of their long-awaited budget handset, the company also announced its next two phones: a 5G-ready Pixel 4a and the flagship Pixel 5, both of which will be available “this fall”. 

Despite the complex launch in a complex year, the premise for the Google Pixel 4a is simple: it’s a basic phone without all the bells, whistles and painful price tags of flagships. Where the Pixel 3a is the mid-range version of the Pixel 3, the Pixel 4a is the mid-range version of the Pixel 4.

Budget is a priority with everything’s that going on in the world right now, but where Pixel phones are concerned, it’s a no brainer to cough up an additional $71 to get the 4a instead of last year’s 3a. Right now, online pre-orders for the 4a have gone live on the Google Store as well as Courts and Challenger.

The best part? It’s just $499. 

Google seems to get it right every time for their budget phones. Everything’s kept clean, everything’s kept simple both inside and out. Aesthetically, it reflects the no-frills spirit with a plain polycarbonate unibody and only one colour option, which is “just black” with an accented power button. The non-metallic chassis results in a significantly reduced weight, and it still feels nice to the touch due to the matte finish.

What’s gone: Wireless charging, fast refresh rate, nasty forehead, the (gimmicky) gesture control, squeezing the phone’s sides to summon Google Assistant, dedicated telephoto lens, face unlock, water resistance, and a handful of other flagship features. 

These are extra things that I realised I don’t actually need in a phone — and happy to see them traded off in exchange for a well-built phone that is absolutely, amazingly competent for less than $500. 

So what has changed since the Pixel 4? On the inside, there’s now a very capable Snapdragon 730G processor, RAM is upped to 6GB, storage is a decent 128GB, and shockingly ample battery capacity — more than 10 per cent larger than the Pixel 4. 

In fact, it’s the biggest battery of any standard non-XL Pixel phone, and Google assures that it addresses a huge concern of the Pixel 4’s power drain. Really, I’ve had times over the past week when I subconsciously sought out a power outlet to juice up the phone in the evening only to realise that the charge is still well over 65 per cent. 

Speaking of XL, you might notice the absence of a bigger option for the Pixel 4a. Supply issues during the pandemic certainly played a part in it, Google tells me, but mostly they figured out that people might not actually need a larger phone now that they got rid of frightfully large foreheads and notches to hide the front-facing cameras and other sensors. 

In its place is a classy 8 MP hole-punch camera on the upper-left corner of the screen. It’s a first for any Pixel phone, but one that’s pretty overdue, I think. Now, a Pixel phone finally sports minimal bezels on a modern-looking 5.81-inch display — and it’s hella sharp too. Considering the low price point, the OLED screen is a surprise, and the 1080p resolution is adequate enough for playing content. Would have been nicer with high-refresh rates, but I don’t miss it. 

As much as some of the big features have been done away with to keep the price point down, the Google software within remains shipshape. Google Assistant is still as swift and helpful as always, live captioning can be switched on for all content and the inbuilt Recorder app automatically transcribes speech. 

Still the best at still images 

I don’t want to get too deep into how the Pixel 4a performs in terms of video capture (Apple remains king in that realm, even with their own mid-range iPhone SE), but the quality is decent, though not the best. You can still shoot 4K videos with the Pixel 4a at 30 frames per second or go lower at 1080p to record videos at up to 60 frames per second. 

But people buy Pixel phones for a specific reason: to shoot top-notch photos on a smartphone camera. Aside from the facemask-circumventing fingerprint scanner, what’s on the back is a simple rear camera system with a single 12.2 MP dual-pixel lens and a flash. That’s pretty much it. 

And yet, that’s all you need, thanks to the software magic of Google’s computational photography. If you’ve used Pixel phones before, you know what to expect — super-crisp images with bold high-dynamic range and vibrant colours to boot. AI-infused photography is still something that Google excels in, and I can safely say that the Pixel 4a, a budget phone, can hold its own against the latest iPhones and Galaxy S20s where photos are concerned. The fact that it’s a stellar camera phone at more than half the price of flagship devices is simply astounding. 

The trade-off here is the lack of wide-angle shots and a telephoto lens, which is… fine. The Pixel 4a still does a good job of doing digital zoomed-in shots because of the software, but only at closer ranges. There’s also a very minor gripe of waiting a smidge longer for the Pixel 4a to finish processing photos after snapping, but the pauses are worthwhile. 

Redefining basic

The word “cheap” is often used in bad contexts, especially when it involves a tech product. But when something is both affordable and amazing at the same time, it’s hard to find fault with the Pixel 4a, a phone that’s a third of the price of high-end models. 

It takes on a different light too right now in the middle of a global crisis that has left millions struggling to make ends meet. In a time when the pandemic has wrecked both salaries of consumers and supply lines of manufacturers, perhaps the Pixel 4a arrived at just the right time, even if we all expected to see it in the market many months ago. Still, better late than never. 

ilyas@asiaone.com