The Pixel 3a and 3a XL were the best smartphones of 2019 – so we said here at Android Police – and they’ve been arguably the best in their class in the three years that have passed since our reviews. Google without any formality extended its OS support for phones by a full year to allow them Android 12L, and the last security update they’ll receive is due next month. Some 3a owners will be more than satisfied to go cruising, but it’s clear to many others that they don’t have much left in the future with the phone officially out of fashion. I think this is as good a time as any to assess not only the overall in and of itself, but what could be the most significant crease in the legacy we call the “Google Phone”.
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purple-ish-tinted glasses
As for the physical artifacts, it’s fair to say that I was pretty excited about the Pixel 3a. I’ve pre-ordered for the purple-ish one. OK, not so excited about the overwhelming softness of its interior color scheme—I was aiming for a lilac and got a lily instead.
Retrospective for the Pixel 3a.
But I was so in love with the colors applied by the camera that I became absolutely obsessed with Shutterbug. Twilight and Night Sight photos were easier to shoot as I could hold a beautiful phone steady compared to the stocky LG V40 ThinQ I’ve used before and they came out with blazing, eye-catching gradients. More practically, I could take pictures wherever and whenever I wanted. My Pixel 3a was responsive enough to jump out of even heavy loads, from entering a double-tap on the power button to barely snapping in an instant. The hardware remained with me – I can’t say for certain current premium flagships, let alone others that run the Snapdragon 670 chipset. Free Google Photos backup, even . but even right now High quality, were the cherry on top. These cumulative effects enabled my point-and-shoot frenzy, and no other phone inflicted such a loving feeling on me.
Lots of photos came from lots of trips, and it was in transit days that I pushed my daily driver to his limits. A big spoonful of live location data for podcasts, music, streaming YouTube, and navigation churns out the energy from an already modest power plant. The battery usually hits the half-empty mark after three or four hours of use, so my power bank, and its awkward cabling, came out of my backpack and into my pocket. Still, despite the Pixel 3a’s average battery life, I was happy that the phone’s raw performance continued to run across the rest of the software. The phone managed its 4GB of RAM decently and made sure that some of the occasional tasks I got — like unwrapping unexpected bus stop swaps and pulling gigabytes of cloud files — were done just in time.
And most of the time I’ve had my Pixel 3a, I can say that I was satisfied with it just based on the solid performance and its excellent camera. Not only did it reliably do what I wanted to do, but it also allowed me to do something I could never do before.
non-aligned sensitivity
Google’s software update guarantees against Apple’s support for iOS have always been inadequate. In the end, like it or not, they were the standard for Android in 2019. The 3A booted up on day one with Android 9 and two OS updates were promised, but the additional “1.1” OS upgrade really felt the same to it. Subject. Eventually, the company expanded the support window for some of its phones as far back as the Nexus era. Of course, like the Nexus, the Pixel maintains its position as a first-party developer workhorse. These days, though, users don’t have to wait for the annual edition bump to squeeze more out of their phones.
As Google began to cater to the average consumer, it enabled an aggressive strategy of developing and delivering new features across multiple generations of the Pixel, which it calls Pixel Feature Drops. Many of these performances were mundane, people couldn’t live without Direct My Call, Hold for Me, or Call Screen when they tried them out. Long-suffering Dark Mode fans had to wait until the second fall in March 2020 to get the automatic scheduling option. At the more exciting end of the gamut, some 3a haters were especially pleased to see the Pixel 4’s astrophotography capabilities. There was mass-market appeal and some costs to platform developers, who had to deal with the background activity limits that came with some of these drops, which may attest to that.
But as editor-in-chief Daniel Bader said on our new Android Police podcast, most of these tweaks and tricks were well-intentioned, well-executed, and competitors in the Android realm would have been hard-pressed to replicate them. . Well, most except maybe Samsung, but with such a broad device portfolio, and some generous options in pushing usability, I’ll bet it’s as disappointing as it will be interesting to see if camp makes an effort. coordinates.
Features delivered to Pixel phones from June 2020 onwards from the third feature drop.
That doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed with the way things are. The availability of these new features hasn’t always been as widespread as I’d like it to be. Some of these omissions are to be expected as they come down to hardware or firmware dependencies such as the UWB-enhanced NearShare for the Pixel 6, but one missed opportunity that stuck in my head was the Pixel 3’s Top Shot feature. Was porting to Pixel 2. , More recently, the owner of 3a right now Missed out on the ability to mark songs from your Now Playing history as favorites – I think that’s a particularly arbitrary and horrifying disservice.
Some of these fresh “dropped” features aren’t even exclusive to the Pixel. Anyone typing with Gboard can play with the incredibly fun Emoji Kitchen and custom text stickers, but you probably won’t know better if you see the word “Pixel” beside them.
arch bending
On brass tacks, the 3a was the beneficiary of its fair share of feature drops that took a good phone and made it new over and over again. From my eyes, the $399 I paid for it seemed to stretch for miles.
And it wasn’t just my feeling: Buyers thank the phone for its low price as well as Google’s colossal achievement in expanding wireless network retail carriage from just Verizon to five carriers (plus Google Fi, but first-party). gave. t count). More clearly, the positive long-term reviews of the 3a and the associated word of mouth may have helped drive Pixel 4a sales even higher.
However, that momentum has stalled, as the pandemic wreaks havoc on the supply chain and economy. The Pixel 6 ushered in an era of buggy updates (presumably stemming from the circumstances surrounding Google’s custom Tensor chipset), which has left it telefonica non grata with buyers, so to speak.
With some luck, the Pixel 6a could be primed to capitalize on the series; It only needs to be carried, and it only needs to be done. It seems the recent updates to the 6 Series have stabilized in quality, so we’re keeping our fingers crossed as to what the situation is. That said, Google today may find it difficult to understand what it can offer to 3a users of the past. While we don’t know what the feature drops will bring in the future, the loss of free Google Photos backup doesn’t help.
When the time comes, I’m pretty sure I’ll reach 6a. My 3A battery is only getting old and you can probably see more scratches and blemishes from my pictures. But I don’t think I will trade it or sell it. I love this thing – the thing that has brought itself to me – that too, too much to let it go.
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About the Author
Jules Wang (1329 articles published)
Jules joined the Android Police team in 2019. Before that, he was in Pocketnow. He loves public transportation, podcasts, and people in general. He also likes to take ideas from the big picture in technology about how people are drawn to how it’s used in every other industry.
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