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I'm a long time iPhone user,
but I've been wanting to dabble
in the Android world for quite a bit.
And since the Pixel 4a is pretty new,
I figured this would
be a good start point.
(upbeat music)
Hey guys, how are you all doing, really?
That's just great.
You know, I'm doing
pretty great today too,
because the Pixel 4a is here in my lair,
and if you're new here, welcome,
my name is Krazy Ken.
And I've been testing
out the Google Pixel 4a
for about two weeks now.
And as you could imagine,
I have some things to say.
But ultimately we'll be
answering the question,
who is this phone for?
But first, what is it?
In a few words, it's very
simple and inexpensive.
and this is kind of optimized
by the color options
on the website, black.
Just Black.
That's Google saying don't even ask
for any other colors or configurations.
It's just freaking black.
So it's simple.
One size, one color, one
set of specs, one price
$349.
Before we hop more into my thoughts,
let's break down the specs of this guy.
So this phone features
a 5.8-inch, 1080-by-2340
all wide display with a whole punch camera
or as Google calls it, the
transmissive hole, pretty fancy.
And because it's OLED,
the blacks on the screen
really look black and rich
with a 200,000 to one contrast ratio.
It also features six gigabytes of Ram,
128 gigabytes of storage and
a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G
with an Octa-Core Titan M,
which is Google's security chip.
And you're guaranteed at least three years
of OS and security updates.
The rear camera has a
12.2 megaPixel sensor
and the front camera has
an eight megaPixel sensor.
And as for the rear
cameras, video capabilities,
it can shoot up to 4K
at 30 frames per second,
and it has video stabilization.
and of all the features on the phone,
I'm definitely testing
the camera out the most,
because I think that's the feature
most people care about a lot.
So we'll talk more about that soon.
On the battery end,
the phone has a 3,140
milliamp hour battery,
and the phone comes with
an 18 Watt USB-C adapter
and a quick switch adapter too.
So pretty neato.
And here's another thing
you don't see too often,
a headphone jack.
So that's included with your 4a.
Can I be honest?
I kind of missed the
headphone Jack on my iPhone.
So that's kind of nice.
And on the rear,
you have that handy capacity
fingerprint scanner,
so you can unlock your phone super easily.
So to keep things as fair as possible,
I'm approaching this review in two ways.
The first way I'm
approaching the review in is,
me as a long time iPhone user
being new to the Android platform
and considering all of the speed
bumps I guess you could say
during my transition,
and the other way I'm
approaching this review is,
more holistically,
and I'm trying to phase the iPhone
out of my mind completely,
and I'm just reviewing
the phone for what it is.
No iPhone in my memory at all.
So after using an iPhone for so long,
the first thing that hit me
with the 4a was how it feels,
because it's made of polycarbonate,
it's so much lighter than what used to,
because I carry a stainless
steel and glass phone
around all the time.
But also the feeling of
the back was different
because it's polycarbonate,
but it's got this kind of
powder coated finish to it.
And I'll be honest, I'm
not a huge fan of that,
It feels kind of weird on my fingers.
It almost feels like the
feeling lingers on my fingers
even after I touch it for a while.
I'm not sure if that
happens to anybody else
or if I'm just weird.
There's probably a more technical name
for that type of powder
coating, I'm not an engineer.
And I couldn't say,
hey, it's only $350, so
it's okay that it's cheaper
feeling like that.
But then I think,
well, the iPhone SE is only $50 more
and that's a glass and aluminum,
but there's trade-offs to everything.
And honestly, if I was an Android user
and I wanted to stay in
the Android ecosystem,
I wouldn't even be considering
an iPhone SE anyway,
so ultimately, it doesn't matter.
The screen though feels perfect.
It's Gorilla Glass 3,
so no complaints there.
Visually, I do like
the look of the design,
way more than the feel of the design.
It's got that unibody look, no seams,
It's just all one piece,
very, very minimalist looking, very clean.
And I also like that the top speaker
is built in to the bezel here.
So because of that and because
of the whole punch camera,
there's no need for a notch,
like what you have on the iPhone.
Now I understand the iPhone
has a lot of hardware
shoved in there for face ID
and the true depth camera
and all that stuff.
It's trade-offs, nothing is free.
There's always trade-offs.
But on this particular phone,
with the way it's built,
you seem to have more uninterrupted screen
because there is no notch.
So let's talk software for a bit.
Because I'm transitioning
to Android for this test,
I just wanted to install a few apps
that I'm comfortable with,
that I use all the time like Dropbox,
and of course, YouTube,
Twitter, all that great stuff.
But also, since Apple
offers it, Apple Music,
they have an Android version of that app,
and I subscribed to Apple Music recently,
and honestly, I'm really loving it.
Another app I wanna talk about super quick
is actually really new to me.
I haven't even installed
it on my daily driver.
It's only on my test phone
cause I just jumped right in,
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That's been on my to read
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it's finally time to get that one done.
What else?
"The 5 am Club."
I mean, that sounds kind of torturous.
Maybe I'll skip that one for now.
I'm kidding.
I think Tim Cook wakes up like at four
in the morning every day,
so if you wanna be the
CEO of Apple one day,
you better start waking up early.
They have blinks about entrepreneurship,
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And again, the seven day
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you can cancel at any time, no worries,
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So thanks Blinkist for
sponsoring this episode.
Okay, so let's talk
about the OS for a sec.
Now I'm not gonna go too far
down the rabbit hole here
because this is not an Android review,
but I do have some thoughts.
And this is actually
one of the main reasons
why I wanted to start
my Android experience
with a Pixel 4a,
because Google makes the Pixel hardware
and they make the Android
operating systems.
So it's kind of that nice
hardware-software marriage
that I'm used to with Apple,
so that's why I decided to start there.
But, don't worry.
I still wanna try other
Android devices coming up,
like the Surface Duo.
I will be doing a review
episode about that
and possibly even a raw
first impressions episode,
so make sure you're
subscribed for that later.
So it did take me a while to get used
to some of the gestures
and the lack of the rubber
banding while scrolling
just kind of felt off to me,
but you know, that's just force of habit.
That's an Apple thing and
I was just used to it.
And for some reason,
the wifi would not connect with my phone,
it took three tries to join it,
but, hey it ended up working.
So overall, not too many
issues so far, still learning,
but, also as you may notice,
some of you may have seen
that I switched to the Nova launcher
and I ditched the Pixel launcher.
I mean, it was okay,
but the at a glance view
was kinda just bugging me,
I don't always need that kind of stuff up.
I really like having virtually
nothing on my home screen,
but when I was looking
at how to turn it off,
I was googling it,
and a bunch of people were
having the same problem
I was having, so good,
I wasn't the only one that was confused,
but the most common answer that I saw
was install a different launcher.
And the most popular one I
saw pop up was Nova launcher.
So I did that and I'm digging it,
and there's some other parts of the UI
that just kind of bug me,
that's just how my trained eye kind of is,
and I'm just used to
more, I guess consistency
and like even spacing
and rounding with iOS.
And I've noticed in Android,
at least particularly on the 4a here,
rounded corners aren't the same on the top
as they are on the bottom.
It seems like things are
getting cut off with the screen
and they don't play nice
with the rounded corners.
That may sound like I'm just being picky,
but those types of small details
really make it or break it
for me when it comes to first impressions.
I know I'm not the only
one that thinks that,
that's just my opinion,
but let me know what you think.
There are some features I do like though,
like Google Lens being
built in is pretty cool,
the Now Listening feature,
so if I'm in a store or something
and music plays, you know,
it'll just pop up the name of
the song on the lock screen.
I think that's pretty cool.
And just some small things too,
like if I'm searching for a setting,
the search results will
have the on and off switches
just easily available there,
that's a cool shortcut.
So small things like that
are pretty freaking handy.
I'm still working my way
through that learning curve
getting used to the software,
but thankfully I have all of
you awesome people on Twitter
to help me out with that.
So thank you.
All right, camera time.
So when I was reviewing my
test photos for this episode,
there was an involuntary
like audible, "Oh, wow."
That escaped in my mouth
when I was viewing them
on my big iMac screen,
because I was really surprised,
for a $350 phone to
have a camera that good.
The pictures were just so sharp.
It was really impressive.
Even the optical depth
of field held up well.
This shot was taken without
any kind of post-processing
done to it.
I did do some edits to
experiment with the color,
but the blur was done
completely optically.
Night shot also works pretty well in here.
Here's a photo of a low light situation
without night shot turned on
and here is the same
setting with night shot on.
And here's just some other general tests
that I did a few more edits with Photoshop
just to experiment with some color,
but as you can see, it works really well.
And I wanted to take a
lot of closeup shots,
the macro capabilities worked pretty well.
I could get pretty close to subjects
without things going out of focus.
And I did a lot of sharpness testing,
you can see the details are
preserved really well here.
As for the video capabilities,
nothing really to write home about,
again, it goes up to 4K at 3FPS
and the stabilization is pretty decent.
The color and luminance was okay,
like it wasn't going too
crazy with crushing blacks
and blowing out the highlights.
So again, I can't really
complain only 350 bucks.
There's also a front facing camera.
I mean, you saw it earlier,
the whole punch thing,
but like,
do it.
I am not so a selfie guy,
I really don't do that,
but it does work.
And it also does work with other features
like the portrait mode,
which will artificially
blur out the background,
computational photography
man, it's gonna take over.
It pretty much already has.
So back to that question,
who is this phone for?
I don't think Google is trying
to win over iPhone users
with this phone.
So it's not about acquisition.
It's about retention.
They're trying to keep people
in the Android ecosystem,
particularly with Google
hardware, for a low cost.
This is the answer to the
iPhone SE second generation.
It's a low cost phone,
that still has plenty of great features.
So if you wanna remain
in the Android ecosystem,
just because that's what you're used to,
and you don't wanna spend a bunch of money
on your next phone upgrade,
this is the phone for you.
This is your next phone, simple.
But, that's just my 2 cents,
it's been fun getting to play with Android
and get more into it
because I've been wanting
to do that for a while.
And again, I will be testing
up a Surface Duo soon as well,
so make sure you're subscribed
and stay tuned for that.
Let me know what you think
about the Google Pixel 4a
in the comments below.
And if you wanna support this channel,
plus get some awesome
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Thanks for your support.
If you liked this episode,
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Thanks for sticking with me.
Catch the crazy,
and pass it on.
(upbeat music)
