Google Pixel smartphone

[AJB88]

Pixel 1 to Pixel 3 will be an upgrade, Pixel 1 to Pixel 3a wont really be that much if any of an upgrade.

[stevoknevo]

jamoor said:

S100HP said:

Thread bump. My pixel is really struggling now. I don't want to pay £36 a month plus £100 upfront for a 4, so am looking at a 3a. £22 a month plus £50 upfront.

Is it a worthwhile upgrade?

Get a 3? I wouldn’t get a 3a as I used one and it wasn’t a great experience

Surprised to here that, I've not heard a bad word said about the 3a/3aXL by anyone on the various Pixel/Google subs on Reddit, I've seen loads of complaints about the 3's hardware though - there's no contest that the 3 has better specs/build quality/features and it's objectively better in speed tests (3a is pretty dann close to the Pixel 2 performance) but your hardly likely to notice much difference in day to day use and camera quality is virtually identical, although processing of images is slower on the 3a, and battery life is better on 3a due to having a larger capacity cell/less powerful chipset than the 3.
I've got a 2xl and I'd take a 3aXL over a 3xl purely to avoid that bloody bathtub notch!

OP, buying a 3a outright (£329 at Argos) and £10 giffgaff SIM for unlimited mins/texts/6gb is near enough the exact cost of your deal, if your getting 6gb or more of course. Where are you getting that deal from, not seen anything around that price when I've been looking recently for my Mum.
If you're a mega heavy data user 3 are doing a Pixel 3 for £33pm, £29 upfront for 100gb! It's on 3 though, not great indoors IME.

[S100HP]

Thanks for the info. Managed to get a 4 on EE (who I'm on a sim only deal with) for £35 a month an waived the upfront cost.

[jamoor]

stevoknevo said:

jamoor said:

S100HP said:

Thread bump. My pixel is really struggling now. I don't want to pay £36 a month plus £100 upfront for a 4, so am looking at a 3a. £22 a month plus £50 upfront.

Is it a worthwhile upgrade?

Get a 3? I wouldn’t get a 3a as I used one and it wasn’t a great experience

Surprised to here that, I've not heard a bad word said about the 3a/3aXL by anyone on the various Pixel/Google subs on Reddit, I've seen loads of complaints about the 3's hardware though - there's no contest that the 3 has better specs/build quality/features and it's objectively better in speed tests (3a is pretty dann close to the Pixel 2 performance) but your hardly likely to notice much difference in day to day use and camera quality is virtually identical, although processing of images is slower on the 3a, and battery life is better on 3a due to having a larger capacity cell/less powerful chipset than the 3.
I've got a 2xl and I'd take a 3aXL over a 3xl purely to avoid that bloody bathtub notch!

OP, buying a 3a outright (£329 at Argos) and £10 giffgaff SIM for unlimited mins/texts/6gb is near enough the exact cost of your deal, if your getting 6gb or more of course. Where are you getting that deal from, not seen anything around that price when I've been looking recently for my Mum.
If you're a mega heavy data user 3 are doing a Pixel 3 for £33pm, £29 upfront for 100gb! It's on 3 though, not great indoors IME.

On the other hand I owned a 3 for a year and had zero probelms with anything.

[alorotom]

Love my 3a ... Chopped out an XSMax for it and it's every bit as good as the iPhone.

Paid £319 in Google's anniversary bday sale

[stevoknevo]

Probably the best place for this - comparison of every single Google smartphone.

https://youtu.be/KQaZa-8ku30

[stevoknevo]

Pixel 4a finally announced - 5.8" 1080p 60hz oled screen, 6gb/128gb, Snapdragon 730g, plastic unibody construction that's only available in black, flagship level stills camera, and only £349! However presales aren't until 10th September with a release date of 1st October - why Google, just why when you've had all this time to sort it out, even taking the pandemic in to account, yet Oneplus have managed to to get the Nord out (with better specs for not much extra cash) Given the for sale date is generally when their flagship releases, I'd say the Pixel 5 is probably going to be pushed back too?

Reviews so far are all fairly positive - https://youtu.be/dlHnleQU9tQ

[jammy-git]

Sounds like marketing won an argument about releasing info early in the hope that people will hold off buying a new phone until it's released.

[alorotom]

stevoknevo said:

Pixel 4a finally announced - 5.8" 1080p 60hz oled screen, 6gb/128gb, Snapdragon 730g, plastic unibody construction that's only available in black, flagship level stills camera, and only £349! However presales aren't until 10th September with a release date of 1st October - why Google, just why when you've had all this time to sort it out, even taking the pandemic in to account, yet Oneplus have managed to to get the Nord out (with better specs for not much extra cash) Given the for sale date is generally when their flagship releases, I'd say the Pixel 5 is probably going to be pushed back too?

Reviews so far are all fairly positive - https://youtu.be/dlHnleQU9tQ

Presale seems to be live ... I’ve just had the email for the preorder ... got through to the checkout as well when I tried it?

[Luke.]

alorotom said:

Presale seems to be live ... I’ve just had the email for the preorder ... got through to the checkout as well when I tried it?

I'd still go for an S10e over this.

[Funk]

It looks like Google aren't aiming for 'premium' any more, ceding the ground to Apple and Samsung. It's a shame in a way but they've never quite hit the mark with the hardware, there's always something sub-par. On the 2 XL it was the screen, on the 3 XL it was the notch, the 4 XL it's the battery life; every iteration has a flaw. If I could have my 4 XL with a bigger battery (and I'd be happy to have a slightly thicker phone as a result) and a fingerprint scanner again it'd be great.

If I could have Samsung hardware running pure Android without any of the crap Samsung insist on overlaying then I'd be there like a shot.

[jamoor]

Funk said:

It looks like Google aren't aiming for 'premium' any more, ceding the ground to Apple and Samsung. It's a shame in a way but they've never quite hit the mark with the hardware, there's always something sub-par. On the 2 XL it was the screen, on the 3 XL it was the notch, the 4 XL it's the battery life; every iteration has a flaw. If I could have my 4 XL with a bigger battery (and I'd be happy to have a slightly thicker phone as a result) and a fingerprint scanner again it'd be great.

If I could have Samsung hardware running pure Android without any of the crap Samsung insist on overlaying then I'd be there like a shot.

I was an avid google user from the nexus 6p pixel 1,2,3 but the hardware didn't improve much and I value a versatile camera setup.

The 4 didn't have that compared to the iphone so I switached. I will have no problem switching back if the 5 has good hardware, the camera really is the best in the business.

[Funk]

jamoor said:

I was an avid google user from the nexus 6p pixel 1,2,3 but the hardware didn't improve much and I value a versatile camera setup.

The 4 didn't have that compared to the iphone so I switached. I will have no problem switching back if the 5 has good hardware, the camera really is the best in the business.

It used to be but everyone else that was caught napping has caught up fast, especially with low-light etc. Don't get me wrong, it's still good but it's not enough to give Google a significant lead any more or to charge premium prices for mid-range specs.

I'm all-in on Google (3x Home Max, Nest, Nest Protect and had 6P, 2 XL and 4 XL phones) but even I find it hard to get enthusiastic about the phone design and specs. It's odd given how much resource Google have at their disposal (and didn't they effectively buy HTC's phone hardware division?) and how well-known they are they've never managed to crack the phone market. Their share is miniscule compared to Samsung, Apple and even the likes of Huawei and Xiaomi.

[jamoor]

Funk said:

Don't get me wrong, it's still good but it's not enough to give Google a significant lead any more or to charge premium prices for mid-range specs.

.

Yep true, back in the 6p and pixel 1 days they were leagues ahead of the competition.

I remember using the 6p and thinking that this is a genuine point and shoot replacement

[S100HP]

I had a pixel 1, super phone at the time. Genuinely incredible. Held out till the battery became unreliable and got the 4 shortly after it was released. It's perfectly acceptable as a phone but the battery life is quite an issue, if you use the phone too much. They really need to fix that for the 5.

[AJB88]

My 4XL battery life is good and I'm a heavy user, however 4XL wasn't a massive upgrade over my 2XL in all honesty, probably wasn't worth the £££

[stevoknevo]

alorotom said:

Presale seems to be live ... I’ve just had the email for the preorder ... got through to the checkout as well when I tried it?

I was going off one of the reviews I watched that said it, either MrWhoseTheBoss or Tech Spurt - either I picked them up wrong (kids just back from a week away) or the reviewer did?

Edit - checked again and it was Tech Spurt who gave the September/October dates, just watched the Deiter guy on The Verge and he said August 20th? (former is UK based, latter US)
Edit 2 - Tech radar saying 20th August for US, 10th September for Aus, and 1st October for UK.

Edited by stevoknevo on Monday 3rd August 22:26

[stevoknevo]

jamoor said:

I was an avid google user from the nexus 6p pixel 1,2,3 but the hardware didn't improve much and I value a versatile camera setup.

The 4 didn't have that compared to the iphone so I switached. I will have no problem switching back if the 5 has good hardware, the camera really is the best in the business.

The 5 has been rumoured for quite a while now to be using the SD765, same as the Oneplus Nord has, reason supposedly being that it has 5g on the SoC whereas with the 865 you need to buy an additional 5g module which increases the cost and adds something else that takes up space (apparently Qualcom only sell it as a package - LG meant to be doing the same with their top end phones too?)

[enpointe]

Funk said:

It looks like Google aren't aiming for 'premium' any more, ceding the ground to Apple and Samsung. It's a shame in a way but they've never quite hit the mark with the hardware, there's always something sub-par. On the 2 XL it was the screen, on the 3 XL it was the notch, the 4 XL it's the battery life; every iteration has a flaw. If I could have my 4 XL with a bigger battery (and I'd be happy to have a slightly thicker phone as a result) and a fingerprint scanner again it'd be great.

If I could have Samsung hardware running pure Android without any of the crap Samsung insist on overlaying then I'd be there like a shot.

this the Pixel 4a their 'midrange' phone ...

[gman88667733]

For an average user, there really isn't much wrong with the 3a, so the 4a is definitely a fine phone.

My 3a rarely slows down, battery lasts all day, camera is better than almost everything else, screen is decent. A year after launch it is still a perfectly good phone and I expect will last another couple of years.

Had the 4a been £299 instead of £349, I probably would've upgraded early though...