Pixel 4a Smartphone Review with Pros and cons

 

hi guys this is shubham and in this article let's do the full review of this pixel 4a and guys as you can see this is a pretty small phone it's a very compact uh phone and guys i won't go over every physical aspect and everything i've already covered that in my unboxing video so check out that for more info and let's quickly jump in between the pros and cons what do i like and what are the things that i did not like let's start with the pros and the first thing is the size as you can see it's having a 5.8 one inch screen it's an amoled full hd plus screen and as you can see they put a decent uh amoled screen on uh this one and uh this is one of those rare phones that's a pretty compact phone so for a change i enjoyed using this one i would

 say and uh again this comes in only one variant here in india uh it comes with six gigabytes of ram and 128 gigabytes of storage and the regular price is 32 000 but as of now on flipkart it's for 30 000 i'll leave the link in the description for your reference and what i liked with this phone is that though uh this is sort of the mid-range phone from google they did not compromise on the basics i would say in fact some of the things for example the haptic feedback etc feels like it's on the premium smartphone it also has stereo speakers and again you get the pixel phone for the stock experience and that's what you get again no 

bloatware or anything that was pre-installed and out of the box uh you will get it with android 11 so again in day-to-day usage i did not find any issues of lagginess on this one and even the ram management was done very well so in that way i would say it's a very fluid phone uh but one thing to note is that guys uh this is technically a dual sim phone but again uh only one sim is actually physical nano sim and i i tested this one with my atl sim the second sim you can offer the esim but in my testing guys i did not offer the esm sorry all my testing is based on a single cell with eight and i moved it i'm testing the oneplus 8t but i did test this for over a week and i would say in that area in terms of uh let's talk about the

 cellular reception and the network quality that i got the network speeds that i got on this one was very good also the wi-fi antennas are calibrated very well uh i have a geo connection in my house which i kept to about 500 megabit and on this phone it i was able to reach almost a max speed of about 470 megabit so again the wi-fi antennas are very well calibrated on this one it has carrier recognition even on mobile uh what do you say network the speeds were very good and i have to stress this that the earpiece quality is among the best that i've seen in this price range in fact i would compare it with higher flagships these days what is happening is that we are getting a lot of smartphones but the basics like call quality how's the

 earpiece are getting compromised but that's not the case on this one it felt like i was using a premium high-end smartphone in terms of network reception as well as cellular call quality again as i've told you it has that stereo speakers so even you can take calls on speakerphone that's actually good let me try to give you an idea let me search for my own videos and let's have a look\

that i have is uh running on so it's adequately loud uh that stereo speakers does a good job but one thing is that at max volume if you keep the speakers the back slightly vibrates so that is what i've used but in terms of volume level i did not have a problem with this one uh now moving to the battery this was my biggest worry about this smartphone because as you can see it's a small phone and not bulky also and it has a 3140 milliamp hour battery these days we are used to four thousand four thousand five hundred five thousand milliamp hour battery so that was my biggest worry but i'm surprised with the battery life that I 

was getting on uh this one easily lasted me over a full working day without any issues and as you can see from the screenshots the standby time is excellent on this one the idle drain that is at night is very very low on this one so easily gets over the day so battery life is not an issue and in terms of screen on time you can get anywhere about five to over six hours of screen on time with this one uh i did not even have to use the battery saver mode or anything so the calibration what google has done is really good battery life was my biggest worry i said in my unboxing video but after using this one i would say easily last for

 a typical working day over 24 hours and for casual users it can last about one and a half days again guys this is with a single sim if you add that e maybe uh expect a battery life drop of about five to ten percent uh this one also has this always on uh feature so you can enable it by default it is disabled but one thing i do not like is that in many phones you have a schedule for example you want this always on uh during the

 morning and at night you can it automatically gets disabled we don't have something like this so this keeps on running throughout the night also hope they had it now going to the fingerprint scanner it's a physical fingerprint scanner here at the back and it's very responsive as you can see i have no problems but i felt they could have gone with in display fingerprint scanner because this is an amulet screen so yeah but you do get used to this fingerprint scanner quickly and it's a reliable fingerprint scanner on this smartphone uh now moving to another thing is that as i've told you in the day-to-day performance again i did not have an issue and i'm happy to say that now pixel has started finally giving six gigabytes

 of ram and because of that almost stock android experience that you are getting again no problems in terms of ram management on this device so that way it performed very well and i have to say i really enjoyed using this device because of the compact form factor i felt it was too small the first day but after a day or two i really started liking this one compared to oversized phones that we are getting uh these days so if you are a person who likes compact phones you will actually really like this one now let's also move to another thing 

that is uh the camera on this one and if you notice at the back we just have a single camera on this one and this is the led flash guys not a secondary camera and front we have eight megapixel this is a punch hole kind of a what do you say thing and i would say for a single camera the camera performance is really good as you can see with the sample shots uh it has the google's processing and because of that

 as you can see the dynamic range is also very good a very harsh light was there and then also the pictures came out good so overall i would say the camera performance is actually pretty good on this one even in indoor lighting conditions it does perform very well uh but the thing is that i do miss that ultra wide angle lens which is simply missing on this one moving to the front facing camera i would say i had mixed experience with this one uh most of the time it was decent but in certain situations notice this shot that i took uh look at the back it was overblown which was very surprising so looks like that it's not doing that processing that much with the front-facing camera but when i shot this video that i shot outdoors 

 it came out good though i shot it in very harsh lighting conditions so here are some video samples during this video with the front-facing camera of this pixel 4a it's a very sunny day for a change sun came today in hyderabad and i'm just going to walk around to give you an idea how it is it's very very sunny right now again i hope it is handling the exposure fine again guys audio is also being recorded i'm going

 against the light to give you an idea how it is doing and the audio is also being uh recorded uh via its internal microphone so what do you guys think about this footage again ideal for vlog style uh videos but you guys let me know what do you feel about the same shooting with the rear facing camera and this is a shadowed area and we'll just move to very sunny area to see how it handles exposure and i'm just walking uh this has electronic stabilization and you guys let me know what do you feel about this let's see how well it focus close look

s like that's it takes a couple of seconds let me just do it again yes in a second it comes back and let's just go back now to a shadowed area i'm not using any tap to focus or anything let's see how it handles the exposure now we are in a shadowed area and let me know what do you think about the video footage

 via this pixel 4a and by the way guys uh this one also has nfc now let's move to the cons and the things that i did not like with this device and uh the first con is that and this is very surprising is the ringtone volume on this as i told you it has that stereo speakers you listen to it they are adequately loud but for some reason those ringtones that are on this one are very very low volume even at the max volume i've kept it at max volume then al so it is very very uh what do you say low so i do not like that so the thing is that if you're in the same room it's okay but even if you're even in the second room the ringtone volume is so low that you will not hear it and let's say you are on the road and the this is in your pocket you 

might miss it if you don't enable the vibration so i don't get it why are the ringtone volumes so low on this one another thing is that this one has 3.5 mm headphone jack so i was very happy and excited about that but the thing is that i tested it with multiple earphones the sound quality i was getting with this one is not that great it's super super flat so the music was just not enjoyable on this but i did

 try it with bluetooth uh earphones and that way it was good so sudden to see that the headphone output is totally totally flat it was simply not enjoyable i had to use again my bluetooth headset to get enjoyable uh music so that is another con that i have noticed uh now moving to uh another thing as i've told you this is important uh again if you mostly use dual sims and keep swapping your sims again do note that seconds is easy it's not very easy to migrate it so be aware of that uh limitation so i used it as a single seven devices and lastly i would say uh i do miss the fact that this one simply does not have that ultra wide uh camera which i missed in certain situations so these were the broad cons with this 

 device and yes now coming to the pricing as i've told you it's priced at 32 000 but as of now it's available for 30 000 and yes if you compare it with some of the other chinese smartphones with similar configurations you can get it for a lot lower price point but what this smartphone gives you is the overall experience is far far better again you get that stock android experience without any bloatware or ads or anything uh the cellular call quality and the earpiece is excellent the haptic feedback as i've told you was excellent so it gives you a feeling of that premium uh what do you say smartphone in a compact form

 factor this is not for everyone i would say uh if you're on a very tight budget yes though some of the other chinese smartphones do offer a lot more value but if you uh are someone who wants pure android experience without any bloatware ads or anything those are higher in your audio category and you want a good basic smartphone that gets most of the things actually right yes it doesn't have that four or five cameras but the single camera actually does very well apart from that ultra wide so if you are that kind of a 

 person you will be very happy with this smartphone and i have to say i really enjoyed using this smartphone and this will be among one of my top smartphone picks for this 2020. i frankly did not expect that i would like this smartphone before i started testing it but after using it i would say it's a very good smartphone but again guys know about the limitations one physical sim second is e sim and also no ultra white uh that camera that you're getting on that so if you are okay with those things then you can certainly go with this one anyways guys that's it for now thanks for watching this is shubham and i hope to see you in my next article take care guys