A little surprise from Google — Pixel 4a first impressions

I’ve had a great interest in phones for many years. I love the technology and design that goes into them and I often talk about them on social media and other places around the internets.

I few months back I was talking about the Pixel 4a on Twitter with someone. I observed that going by the rumoured specs of the long delayed device, that it would be a perfect replacement for my Pixel 2 XL.

Roll on to a few weeks ago and I had a reply to my tweet in this conversation from Google UK saying that they thought the Pixel 4a would be a great replacement for my ageing Pixel too and to DM them for a special surprise!

It turned out to be a very special surprise indeed..

I received this box ten days ago and as you can see it is not normal consumer packaging. This is the type of thing you would see being sent to reviewers and influencer’s. I was really impressed with the presentation of the package and its very unusual contents, including some sweets and a bottle of grape juice!

But onto the phone as I know that’s what you’re really interested in!

Taking the phone out of the box for the first time I was instantly surprised at how nice it felt in the hand. A polycarbonate body on a phone lost in a sea of metal and glass bound devices was a very welcome change. I’ve been wanting more devices to go to this like many Lumia’s used to be. It isn’t very heavy, but at the same time doesn’t feel lightweight and in turn doesn’t feel cheap either.

Powering on the device you can see instantly how well Google have done in making the phone look more modern. The bezels of previous devices are all but gone and the hole punched display, which is OLED this time around is very nice to look at as you would expect. One thing I’ve noticed is the screen isn’t the brightest around and there seems to be more reflections. It’s likely that there’s not much of an anti-reflective treatment, but after using it for several days I can’t say I’m noticing it any more. At 5.8 inches it is only a touch smaller than my Pixel 2 XL for screen real estate but the overall footprint is so much smaller that the phone feels tiny by comparison. Very compact and ideal for many people’s pockets and hand bags.

So far the software has been very smooth and the phone is definitely quicker in general use than my Pixel 2 XL. I literally received the update to Android 11 for the 4a just a few days ago so I’ll have more on that in the review, but no complaints about the software. It is of course as barebones a version of Android as you can get but the Pixel suite of software is quite useful, even if some of the features are quite understated and not so obvious at times.

One thing that is also quite useful for me is going back to a phone with a rear mounted fingerprint reader. I’ve been using an iPhone 11 for the past ten months and of course it uses Face ID which is now an absolute nightmare to use whilst wearing a mask of course. No issues with going back to this at all. It actually takes a little getting used to because the indentation is difficult to feel, but it isn’t an issue for long.

The main reason for me buying a Pixel has always been the camera. They have never had the best hardware or the highest number of cameras, but in terms of point and shoot you cannot get better than the Pixel. That legacy continues with the Pixel 4a in having a single rear camera and another at the front. Simple but effective. I quite like the Pixel 4 alike square camera module on the rear too.

I haven’t been able to take many photos so far since I’m mostly stuck indoors, but hurray for dogs!

I’ll have a bunch more photos all being well ready for the full review.

So to summarise, my initial impressions of this phone are overwhelmingly positive. As someone who likes bigger phones I would for sure have liked the device to be a little larger and to have a larger battery, not that battery life has so far been bad in any way.

Colour options other than black would have been nice to have but I can understand why they didn’t go with more choices. There’s always Dbrand for that!

Sound off in the comments and let me know what your thoughts are about the Pixel 4a. Is it something you’re interested in buying and if not what are you going for instead?

Stay tuned for the full review.