Google Pixel 4a Review | 8 months Later! By Jake’s Tech Corner

Chins, hello, everyone, so I'm I'm back! I know it's been a while I've had some health issues that still haven't been resolved but trying to get over them. I'm kind of changing the way that I'm doing my channel, and you'll see that impacting in the future, on what I'm going to do. So, I'm going to make a few changes and hopefully that uh bring out some more videos a lot quicker than me doing a six-month in between good and also, I hope, you're well, I hope you'll stay in safe, and here is my eight-month review on the Google Pixel 4a. I know it's a bit of a weird amount being eight months. Normally people do six months or a year. I decided to do eight months because I haven't done a video in six months, hi anyway.

So this is the Google Pixel 4a. This is google's own, take on their budget friendly phones, so you had the 3a, which was their first. A series of phone you've got the 4a, and hopefully the 5a later on this year, and the Google Pixel 4a to start off is is is a very good phone. So as always, I'm going to dive right in and talk about the screen on this phone. It has a 5.81 inch. It's a 5.81 inch display, it runs at 60 hertz, and it has a 1080 1080 by 2340 resolution on it. So it's not the best out there.

I feel you can get better with things like the OnePlus word or the Poco x3, which both have a 90 to 120 hertz respectively, fair enough. Their actual resolution of the phones may not be great, but they have a higher refresh rate and to me, refresh rate is not a nice thing to have. I did have the Oppo 5x3 pro and that had a 120hz display, but what I've got to say I do love about the screen is how easy it is to use with one hand, so I'm able to you know, be able to go to the top parts of the screen without having to do too many hands. Gymnastics I've currently got the iPhone 11 Pro max. That's what I'm using as my daily driver.

I've also got. I also had, as I say, the Oppo f5 x3 pro again another big screen, and before that I had the Samsung Galaxy note.10. big phones mean you have to do more hand gymnastics when trying to get to the top of the phone. With this it makes it a lot easier to use and if I'm honest, it's less of a chance that you're going to drop it as well, because when you're doing all those hand, gymnastics they're, gonna just slip out your hand eventually, so it makes it a little easier to use in one hand which I like, but what I do think is probably the worst part about the screen is the resolution. It's fine.

If you're a casual watcher of YouTube and Netflix, it probably works. Absolutely fine. But if you're like me- and you kind of can see the screen resolution being a bit poor, then you and you kind of don't forget that it's there. I think I've been spoiled when it comes to screen resolutions with the iPhone and the Samsung and the opp, having really nice screens and then going something like this, and I'm a bit late. It sucks in comparison, but for more casual phone users.

This should be absolutely fine, and I can't stay mad at the fact that it is a 60 hertz screen when I'm using an iPhone, and that has a 60hz screen, but with the iPhone the animations kind of make it seem a bit more fluid. But when you've got phones like the OnePlus word- and I say that up uh the Poco x3 that have a say- 90 and 120 hertz refresh rate, you kind of think for this being almost 200 pounds more than the polo. You could have put a faster refresh rate on it. Just my opinion- and I think another downside to the screen is possibly the brightness. If you have adaptive brightness on it goes up to 681 nits.

So it's not great, if you're in direct sunlight, for instance, and also the screen does have corn and marina glass free. So it's not their most advanced screen technology that they've got on it. So what I would do is buy a case put it on there and try and keep it as protected as you can, because it's not going to be very resistant to drops on hard surfaces or scratches the reason I'm not got a case on this at the moment is purely just to show this off show the build it's plastic goodness and up next is the battery, and if this is the reason why the screen resolution is quite poor, then to be fair, it's a pretty good trade-off. The phone has a 3 140 million power battery, which seems a lot smaller than a lot of other phones nowadays, where you've got the Xiaomi's and Samsung's can go up to like four to five thousand million power batteries. This has a three thousand one hundred and forty million power battery, and this lasts a long time.

So, even with heavy usage, I can still get probably a day and a half out of this, maybe, but if I'm hardly using it, I could get two to maybe two in a bit that really surprises me, but I guess that's why it's got the 60 hertz and the poor resolution on it to keep that battery life going and again. If that's the trade-off, then I'm very happy with it, because then you can obviously still watch your YouTube videos and your Netflix keep using the camera going through your social medias and going through everyone's Instagram. Oh tesla, just uploaded a new photo, I'm obsessed with Tesla. If there's something you need to know about me, that's something! I'm obsessed with hit me up! Hang on in the box as well. You do get an 18 watt charging, brick which is pretty slow, if I'm honest it charges from about zero to a hundred percent in just over an hour and a half, not the fastest phone charger.

You can get out there, but to be honest with because your phone will last most likely two days, you're not going to be doing it as often as you are, with phones with faster recess, with faster refresh rates, and you know better resolution and a bigger screen. So it's a good trade-off. So up next is my favorite part of the phone, and that is the camera. I don't know I'm pointing there. It's there that part, and by now we all know that Google pixels have very good cameras, and they're, and it's because they're purely based on software, they do.

Obviously you need the hardware to be able to use the camera, but the software is what makes these cameras so, so good. They pretty much taken the camera from their main phones, the normal pixel lines and put them in this because it's the software, it's so good. This is what puts it ahead of the OnePlus word and the Poco phones. This camera beats them by a mile. The only part that falls behind is that you don't know you do only have a single camera on the back.

So that's just the standard camera, you don't have a telephoto, and you don't have an ultra-wide. You only have that which is a bit of a bit of a bummer, but most of the time, I'm only using my pro my primary camera, I'm not using the ultra-wide or the telephoto lens. I am just going to be using the standard one in terms of hardware. It's only a 12.2 megapixel one, and it does go for f.1 1.7 aperture. So it does let a fair amount of light in, but it's again the software, that's gonna, just those photos.

You know what I mean that makes sense right and another place where this the software really shows how much power it's got is with the night mode. So I put a comparison between this and the iPhone side by side and most of the time this does do better. It makes it seem a lot crisper, and it does let a bit more color in as well, which is nice, the iPhone kind of just blurs it out. So in some cases people may have the iPhone they think. Oh, this looks better than the Google Pixel, but you're going to have the standard from each side one's going to be better than the other.

In some cases it's just going to happen, but I do think either way if you are shooting a night photo with this phone you're going to be happy and, of course, on the front, you do have an eight be easier. I can actually show you it, but my I've got a dark background, and you can't see- and I've got night mode on this- isn't helping that's night light. What am I doing and of course, on the front, you do have an 8 megapixel camera, which has an f 0.2 aperture, so that lets in a bit more light. But again it relies more on software in terms of hardware, that's not a great front-facing camera, that's the same sort of camera that was on the old iPhones. So we don't know how bad that looked, but the real saving grace for these phones cameras is the software.

I know I've said that plenty of times already- I don't know how many times I've said software in this video leave a like. If you like me, saying software and uh next is the performance of this phone. Now I've already discussed the phone runs at 60 hertz, so it makes it seem just a bit slower, but in terms of actual speed for the phone and keeping up with you, it does fine. It does fine, it's not going to be, of course, as fast as uh, the high-end phones. Of course, it's not going to be we're going to be as snappy as the high-end phones, because this does only have a snapdragon 730 g processor, with 6 gigs of ram and 120 gigabytes of storage, and that comes with standard.

You can't upgrade that that's as it comes, which is absolutely fine. You can be gaming on the phone as long as you're, not putting up to the highest uh graphics, quality. Like things like Call of Duty, mobile and pub g, because the phone will get hot and in terms of performance it will start to gradually go down. But if you're just scrolling through your apps, your Instagram, your social medias, doing some light video and photo editing, it will be absolutely fine. It kept up with me pretty well, and I'm quite heavy use all my phones.

I use a lot of apps, so it did pretty well with that. Where I can see the processor where I can see this, the sort of processor starts to take a bit of a hit is when you're taking a lot of photos. You'll see on the bottom left that there is a processing uh bar once you take a photo and that's the software trying to do its thing with the photo and make it look good with the older pixels, like the main pixel line. You don't see this because they have the more powerful processor in it. Whereas this you see it, and it's a little annoying, because you have to kind of wait, it's not too long overweight.

Sometimes it can take up to about five seconds, but it is a bit annoying. If you just wanted to take it, that's it done. You want to look at it, and you want to know, but if you know, all you need is a bit a little of patience with it and that's absolutely fine. Now. Lastly, as a sort of roundup for the phone, I'm going to go through the smaller parts of the phone that I didn't cover, so this phone does have a plastic back to it.

So it's not the most exciting. Look on the phones! It's a black plastic back uh, with the glass cut out with the camera. It does come in two colors. Furthermore, it's got just black and barely blue, which is a nice color to be fair, it's all glass on the front. Furthermore, it has the cutout of the camera, so a whole punch camera.

So it is almost all bezel-less, which is quite nice. It has stereo speakers on the phone. It actually comes with a headphone jack. Surprise, surprise. I was quite surprised with that.

To be fair, it has a fingerprint sensor on the back, so it has no in-display fingerprint sensor, but to be fair, this is nice and fast. So I'm happy with that trade-off and the phone itself starts in the UK at 349 pounds, although because it is eight months later, you can probably find it cheaper in other places, or you might be able to find some good deals for it now as well, and if you do find it at 349 pounds. I think either way it's still really worth the money. You get that perfect camera. You get the perfect battery life, and you get to the decent performance as well.

The only place has to say it needs to kind of work on is the screen. I would love to have seen it with at least a better resolution or 90 hertz. That would have been just the thing to make it the perfect uh budget smartphone, but I would still put it up there with the best budget smartphones that you can get to date, but that's my video, I hope you all enjoyed. I want to thank you all for watching. I know it's been a long time since my last one, and I do apologize but, as I said, I'm going to start making some changes to the channel, and hopefully that means I'm going to be uploading more regularly.

But until my next video, I hope you guys enjoyed please all stay safe and I will see you all in the next one. Bye.

Source : Jake’s Tech Corner