The $499 Google Pixel 8a is official, with 120 Hz display, 7 years of updates

I&#x27;m terrified:<p>&gt; One challenge for the future, and those seven years of updates, will be the 8GB of RAM. Google is already calling devices with 8GB of RAM &quot;hardware limited&quot; when it comes to future AI features, so be prepared for that. It&#x27;s a budget phone, though, so you have to make some trade-offs.<p>1) 8GB ram is hardware limited, 2) $499 is a budget phone???<p>I&#x27;m very happy with my recently acquired Moto G Stylus 5G 2023. It&#x27;s $250 and has 256GB flash (vs 128GB for the 2x as expensive Pixel 8A), has an SD slot so I can put in another 1TB of flash (2TB soon), has a headphone jack (I still prefer wired headphones), actually has decent battery life, and the battery (per ifixit) is not all that hard to replace though I would still much prefer a swappable one.<p>I don&#x27;t think of $250 as a budget phone either. More like midrange. The budget version is the G Play 2024 which is $129 or $149 depending on Moto&#x27;s whims.

I was really hoping they would go back to having a headphone jack on the &#x27;a&#x27; series of pixels.<p>I picked up a 7a pixel and fooled myself into thinking it &quot;can&#x27;t be that bad&quot;. But bluetooth is the worst technology to ever grace our airways, dongles fucking suck, and it&#x27;s been a constant source of annoyance since I got it.<p>I guess I&#x27;ll be picking up something other than a pixel when it comes time to upgrade. But there is an ever shrinking number of options that have both a headphone jack and allow bootloader unlocking&#x2F;locking...

Seven years of updates is good, but how difficult is it to get the battery replaced by a trustworthy shop when it starts dying in three years?

Marques&#x27; review - &quot;Google Pixel 8A Impressions: Just Get The 8!&quot;<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=B3szaVzQx0o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=B3szaVzQx0o</a>

Can it fit in my hand and pockets? Or is it almost the size of iPad mini (8.3 inches)?<p>Read article: it’s 6.1 inches. Roughly halfway between iPhone SE 1 and iPad mini.

&gt;$500<p>&gt;Terrible in-house vendor locked Tensor CPU<p>&gt;8GB RAM + 128GB combo in the EU<p>&gt;Huge bezels<p>&gt;8W wireless charging, are they for real<p>&gt;Same camera setup on an &quot;AI-powered Amazing Camera&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t know how to describe it, mediocre, I guess? Don&#x27;t get me wrong, they surely did polish the phone, but apart from its out-of-the-box tuned camera, it has no value beyond actually mid-range phones in $300-400 range with a tuned GCam loaded on them.

5w wireless charging?!?<p>That&#x27;s like 5 years ago. Where is Qi2?

I own a Pixel 8. I&#x27;ve been impressed with it&#x27;s performance and the general feel of using it over the past months. With Pixel 8a, the gap between A series phones and the non-pro version seems to be diminishing way too fast.<p>They still need to fix the modem issues and thereby increase battery life.

Already had my fill of Pixel 7 Pro problems. The screen failed to register any touches on it, twice. Once within warranty, once outside it. Best I could do is file a claim with my credit card company for a measly $300.<p>For a $1200 phone.<p>Had a bizarrely similar experience with the Pixel Watch.<p>The screen just failed to respond to touch. Wasted an hour figuring out how to get into fast boot mode. After a factory reset, it started working, but it doesn&#x27;t get much more than 12-16 hours of battery time before needing a charge.<p>After losing a lot of money, time, and patience, I&#x27;m done with Google anything. Their hardware is garbage and they seem to have failed to address these issues with newer Pixel releases. Not sure what the point is of having 7 years of updates when the phone&#x27;s hardware will barely last one of those years. And good luck with support.<p>Switched to a Samsung A54, and although it is slower and laggier in some aspects, the hardware is solid and I&#x27;ve been impressed at how clean OneUI is.<p>Tip: When your Pixel screen fails to respond to touch, you can at least plug in a USB mouse and recover what you can before tossing it into the dead gadget drawer.

still the ugliest, mud crawling looking phone in the arena. I mean, it&#x27;s such a disgusting looking stare that I don&#x27;t wanna touch it with a 10 feet pole. Get an industrial designer, preferably someone who lives near beautiful landmarks, like an italian person and don&#x27;t let the engineers tell the individual what can and can&#x27;t be done.<p>I&#x27;m not paying a cent for it, until they sort this design mess out. Also, the android opsys&#x27; looks also needs some love.

Samsung manufactured SoC again? Yeah, no.

Techbros are anti-Pixel&#x2F;Google

I cannot wait to read the reviews about which core piece of smartphones they fucked up with this one. After 3 Pixels, ALL with issues that never should have been present, I decided Google can shove it&#x27;s Pixel phones.<p>I prefer AOSP, rather than all the shitty overlays, so I went with Pixels and just FML. Complete pieces of shit.<p>What kind of fucking clowns make a smartphone with a shitty, barely functional fingerprint reader, in this decade?<p>GL to anyone that uses them, and I sincerely hope YMMV.

At some point Google needs to think about why these phones exist. Nobody buys them and there is no way their hardware division is turning a profit. After Stadia, I bet this is next.

Can it call the emergency services?

Really attractive, but i want to know if Google &#x27;sells&#x27; your data in the ad-bidding process

I purchased a Pixel 7a for work related testing a few weeks ago. It&#x27;s a nice phone and rooting was very easy. I was impressed overall.<p>But those damn ads they deliver as notifications! WTF. Why would they do that.<p>It just reaffirmed my allegiance to Apple.