This is the latest Google mid-range phone for India, and as per rumors, this could be the last as well. I mean, what? Why? And what’s new with this Pixel 8A, and how is it different from the currently discounted Pixel 8? Well, I’ve been using the Pixel 8A for a few days now. There’s a big, big catch with the Pixel 8A, but before that, first and foremost, there are four big upgrades on the Pixel 8A this year.
This time around, you get four colors with the Pixel 8A. There’s porcelain, obsidian, bay, and this new color, aloe. Google just put the Pixel 7a in Photoshop, changed the color, made the corners more round, and voila, there you have the Pixel 8a. It looks exactly like the flagship Pixel 8 in terms of size and in-hand feel; the back of the Pixel 8a is plastic, but it gets a matte finish this year. So fingerprints and all don’t show up, and personally, I’m a fan of how Pixel looks. Like the Robocop design, it’s fun, it’s unique, and it’s identifiable, just like the Pixel 8a looks fun and unique. But the moment you turn the phone and look at those bezels, that’s thick, like that’s a thick bezel for a $50,000 phone. The Pixel 8A gets an upgraded 120Hz 6.1-inch OLED display. Even the increased nits help it be more visible in direct outdoor sunlight. And just like last year, you also get an in-display fingerprint scanner, and there’s also face unlocking. In terms of glass protection, you get Corning Gorilla Glass 3, to which I was like, although you should use a case and tempered glass, but 2024 Corning Gorilla Glass 3, like, that’s a bit old. Now, the major concern people have with battery life is: how’s the heat?
How’s the battery life in real-life conditions? Well, I’ve been using it for a couple of days only, but battery life is good. Now you get 18W fast charging plus a slightly larger 4,492mAh battery. Google the math. But with the mix of WiFi and 5G and half an hour of gaming, it easily lasted me a day. Like the screen on time stats are wrong, I easily got 6 hours on a full charge, which is good for a compact phone. Also, you get wireless charging support and IP67 water resistance, which brings me to the third most important upgrade on the Pixel 8A, the Tensor G3. Now Pixel uses the same processor on their A-series phone as their flagship Pixel series. So this Pixel 8A also comes with the same tensor G3 as the Pixel 8. You get 8GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 128GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Now the good thing is, unlike last year’s Pixel 7A, there’s also a 256GB Pixel 8A variant available right now in India. But the interesting part is that the Pixel 8A kind of performs lower than the Pixel 8 in benchmarks. Like the AnTuTu score, it even throttles a bit more than the Pixel 8. Although the heating is the same, Like during normal tasks on Wi-Fi, scrolling Instagram reels, or doing WhatsApp video calls, it is pretty normal, but if you do the same task on mobile data or 5G, it gets a bit warm. Even in normal games like Subway Surfer or Stick Cricket, it’s all good. But if you get into heavy games like BJMI at 60 FPS, it’s playable, but there are often frame drops. Sometimes it even goes down to 45 FPS. So overall, the G3 performs well in day-to-day tasks and casual gaming, but don’t expect this phone to do hardcore gaming. What you can expect this phone to do is run software. The Pixel 8a comes with Android 14 out of the box. Android 15 is out in beta, but that will launch next month, probably in October. The Pixel 8a now gets 7 years of Android updates, and that’s pretty huge. Now the Pixel 7a gets all the AI features of the Pixel 8. You can pause anywhere on the phone, long press the navigation button, and do a circle to search, and it is very easy to just Google anything. And this is a very neat feature in Pixel that I always love. You can just swipe on an app and instantly select the text or save an image from it. Way faster than taking a screenshot or cropping and doing all of that. In my usage, the software experience was pretty good. I didn’t find any bugs as such, except that there is no pocket mode. So suppose I cover this entire area on the phone, and if I do this, I see it’s still operating. If I do the same on an S23, it doesn’t work. So this way, the Pixel 8A would open in the pocket and just type on this keypad in the phone. So this can be fixed via a software update. and more or less the software experience is the same on the Pixel 8a as the flagship Pixel A. In terms of camera, you get the same camera setup. You get a 64-megapixel main camera and a 12-megapixel ultra-wide-angle camera. And it’s in those pixel photos that you get slightly contrasty, close to natural colors. If you’re a fan of paintings, you’ll love these photos. Also, the Pixel 8a supports 8x super-res zoom.
So this is a 1x photo, and this is an 8x photo. It uses a mix of AI and digital crops. But in the daytime, these 8×10 photos are usable. I also took some photos side by side with the Pixel 8, and it’s very hard to say which one is which; if I could just change the names, you would hardly know. It’s only when it gets low light that the Pixel 8a suffers. The photos are bright, and the colors are good, but when you zoom in, they lack that detail and clarity. And even some low-light photos came out blurry. But overall, for the price, I would say the Pixel 8a is an OK-ish camera phone. By the way, you get a 4K selfie recording, so. But what makes this camera unique are the AI features. And these are legit AI features, not just names. Have a look. This was a group photo, and somehow someone will close their eyes. You just go to the best take to adjust the faces. By the way, this best take not only works on Google Pixel photos but all the older photos that are uploaded to the Google Photo app. Sometimes photos come out blurry, so you can just go to edit unblur done. Even if you shoot this video in full on traffic, I can just remove the noise with a single tap. I understand all these tricks can be done manually or via a website, but you can do all of this on one phone at one place, which is faster and more convenient. Now these are the total AI features that you get with the Pixel 8a. It’s basically everything that you get with the flagship Pixel 8. Now I believe the Pixel 8a is a good upgrade over the Pixel 7a, but the biggest catch or problem starts with the Indian pricing. The Pixel 7a launched in India for Rs. 43,999, and the Pixel 8a launched for Rs. 52,999. You cannot just add a 120Hz display, a slightly upgraded processor, and the and the same camera setup and then charge almost $10,000 more. And if you keep everything, the pricing aside, the Pixel 8 a couple of days ago during the sale was available for $55,000, which definitely is similar or, in some areas, better than the Pixel 8a. So if you really, really want a Google Pixel phone with phone exchange and all of that, if the Pixel 8a comes below 40,000, it’s a good phone. Otherwise, I would recommend waiting a month or so; going by the history, the pricing will come down. You can then get the Pixel 8a, and the whole thing with the Pixel 8a is that it’s getting so close to the flagship Pixel 8 that there’s hardly any difference between both these phones and And maybe that’s the reason this could be the last A-series phone.
