4848 AUGUST 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 378
GOOGLE’SLATESTPHONESare both a
departure and athrowback. The Pixel 3a and
Pixel 3a XL are lower-specced, mid-range
equivalents of the Pixel 3and Pixel 3XL
(Shopper372), themselves members of a
product family that has exclusively dabbled in
the high-end. At the same time,the concept
of competitive hardware at alower price
evokes the Pixel brand’s precursor,Nexus.
There’s alot to be excited about here.
The £399 Pixel 3a is £180 cheaper than the
Pixel 3, yet it looks identical, uses the same
clean Android UI and, crucially,has alargely
identical rear camera. The main differences
are that the Pixel 3a houses aslower
Snapdragon 670 processor,and lacks the
waterproofing of its premium brethren.
NEW DUDS
Other differences are similarly well hidden.
Forinstance,the Pixel 3a shares the Pixel 3
family’s two-tone casing design, with a
smoother section at the topsoftening to a
grippier,silkymatt finish towards the bottom,
although here,it’s built from polycarbonate
plastic, not glass and aluminium.
Not that this leads to acheap-feeling
device.The Pixel 3a is adelight to hold and
use,fitting comfortably in the palm of your
hand. Google’s circular fingerprint reader sits
in the same location on the back of the phone,
and there’s aUSB Type-C charging port on the
bottom, flanked by apair of speaker grilles.
It’s agenuine shame to lose waterproofing,
however,and such cost-cutting also means
there’s no Corning Gorilla Glass protecting
the display. Instead, Google has opted for
Dragontail glass, acheaper but softer(and
thus less scratch-resistant) alternative.
The switch from aglass back panel to aplastic
one has also forced out wireless charging
support, although there is a
much more welcome
difference in the 3.5mm
headphone jack. Google’s
flagships haven’t included
these since the original Pixel.
Besides measuring an
extra 0.1in diagonally,the
Pixel 3a’s displayislargely
unchanged from the Pixel 3.
This is alovely-looking
2,220x1,080 OLED panel,
with apin-sharp pixel density
of 441ppi. There are three
displaymodes to choose
from, with the Natural screen
GOOGLE Pixel3a
★★★★★
£399•From http://www.carphonewarehouse.com
VERDICT
Googlereturnsto moreaffordablehandsets
withthebrilliantPixel3a
ANDROID 9.0 SMARTPHONE
profile being the most
colour-accurate. According
to our colour calibrator,
we found that it covered
an excellent 95.9% of the
sRGB colour gamut, with
an impressive average
delta-E of 0.91. The
Boosted and Adaptive
modes both tend to
oversaturatecolours.
Brightness isn’t too
shabby, either.The Pixel
3a is capable of hitting
apeak luminance of
416cd/m2, meaning
it’s perfectly readable in
all but the brightest
conditions, even if it’s a
long waybehind Samsung’s dazzlingly
bright OLED panels. Aperfect contrast
ratio of infinity:1 also helps readability.
DRAGON HEELS
The Pixel 3a comes equipped with
Qualcomm’s newest mid-range chip,the
octa-core Snapdragon 670. This is a10nm
architecture CPU with aclock speed of
2GHz, so you can’t expect the performance
of the Pixel 3’s Snapdragon 845, which hit a
blazingly fast 2.8GHz. In other respects,
however,it’s much the same,with 4GB of
RAM and 64GB of internal storage.
The good news is that this CPU
downgrade hasn’t simply produced aslow
smartphone.With Geekbench 4scores of
1,619 in the single-core test and 5,146 in the
multicore test, the Pixel 3a is expectedly
behind the Pixel 3, but still acapable runner.
Subjectively,the Pixel 3a doesn’t feel
noticeably slower in normal use.
Gaming performance
takes amore tangible hit, as
the Pixel 3a’s GFXBench
Manhattan 3onscreen score
of 27fps is under half of the
Pixel 3’s 60fps. Most games
are still playable,however,
and can even default to
higher graphical settings.
The Pixel 3a’s battery has
also increased in size to
3,000mAh. That’s only
slightly bigger than the
battery in the regular Pixel 3,
but when you add the
not-so-power-hungry
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage110forperformancedetails
PROCESSOROcta-core2GHzQualcommSnapdragon670•
SCREENSIZE5.6in•SCREENRESOLUTION2,220x1,080•
REARCAMERA12.2megapixels•STORAGE64GB•
WIRELESSDATA4G•NFCYes•DIMENSIONS
151x70x8.2mm•WEIGHT147g•OPERATINGSYSTEM
Android9.0•WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILS
store.google.com•PARTCODEPixel3a
SPECIFICATIONS
15h7m
Snapdragon 670 intothe
mix, you get aphone that
lasts quiteabit longer on
asingle charge.The Pixel
3a lasted 15h 7m in our
looping video test, up
considerably from the
Pixel 3’s 12h 22m.
The rear camera was
easily the best thing about
the Pixel 3: asingle-lens
system that nonetheless
stood among the very
best dual- and triple-lens
shooters. It’s encouraging,
therefore,tosee the same
12.2-megapixel lens trickle
down to the Pixel 3a, with
the wide f/1.8 aperture,
dual-pixel focus and optical image
stabilisation all included. The only difference
is the lack of Google’s Pixel Visual Core
add-on, an additional processor that improves
the quality of HDR and low-light images.
Everything else is identical, and the most
discerning of eyeballs will struggle to tell apart
images shot by the two phones. No matter
the lighting conditions, photos look terrific,
with superb dynamic range and apleasingly
neutral colour palette. Google’s Night Sight
shooting mode impresses again when it
comes to low-light photography,using AI to
illuminateshots in the same wayasthe flash.
AFOR EFFORT
Judging by the Pixel 3a, Google’s return to the
mid-rangeisaboldyethighlysuccessfulmove.
While Huawei’s Lite-branded substitutes of
its Pand Mateseries smartphones are filled
with compromises and cutbacks, the Pixel
3a delivers aremarkably similar top-shelf
experience as its flagship counterpart, but
with asofter impact on your wallet.
NathanSpendelow
