81–90 of 601 posts
4A Review from Marques https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlHnleQU9tQ
Notable quirk in this review: around 5:10 where he starts talking about how usable the software is, he also makes an erroneous gesture with his thumb and has to do it again. This is my experience with the Pixel 3a. The gestures require a range of motion that my thumb just does not have. This isn't going to be any better with the 4a, which is even bigger than the 3a.
Seems interesting if you want a reasonably sized phone with less bloatware, but for 30$ more the Galaxy A71 seems like a better deal, here's a comparison: https://www.gsmarena.com/compare.php3?idPhone1=9995&idPhone2... > 4500 mAh vs 3140 mAh on the Pixel > microSD card slot vs no card slot on Pixel > The A71 has more cameras > 2 extra GBs of RAM on the A71
> 3 years of updates ... Now we're talkin'.
The problem with that is, that Google will drop it exactly when those 3 years are over. 3 years isn't very long, especially if you don't buy at release. Some other manufacturers actually provide quarterly updates after those 3 years but are more inconsistent with delivering monthly updates.
6 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage are both better than my top of the line Pixel 3 from just 2 years ago, so that's good to see. The 730G kind of scares me though, how good is it compared to the top of the line? Are we talking unusably slow? The Pixel 3 issues seemed to be mostly RAM related, not CPU related, so maybe this combo of slower CPU and more RAM would still be faster.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/SD-730G-vs-SD-845_11555_9958.2... Take any benchmarks with a grain of salt, of course, but it appears the 845 is only about 10% faster than the 730G on average. Still that double memory bandwidth certainly affects perceived performance a bit.
One of the biggest reasons I'm happy with the increasing competition in the budget segments is that they're starting to make the 'right' sacrifices, slightly negating the distinctive features and advantages of flagship phones. Flagship phones will either have to adapt (introducing more useful features and not extra camera-bloat), or people will just keep buying the cheaper ones.
I can't help but think the 4a would have been perfect with a 4000mah battery.
Has Audio Jack! (Comparison with other Pixel 4's) - https://store.google.com/magazine/compare_pixel?toggler0=Pix...
The 3A also has an audio jack. I frankly never use it, and sort of wish it weren't there. I wish they would maybe ship it with a thing you can put in the hole that closes it up to make it seamless, but can be removed.
That's the big thing holding me (and many people) back from being able to completely let go of DSLRs. The P30 Pro is so close, it's a real revolution. But it's not quite good enough in many situations (autofocus is slow, any kind of action, low light is pretty bad.) Whatever company puts in a truly good quality, versatile telephoto lens... they'll have my money and a massive part of the DSLR market.
I have a feeling that it's going to be either Huawei incrementally improving their telephoto lens, Google delivering a computational breakthrough (and everyone else using it), or Apple/Samsung making some intricate, complex hardware.
One of the biggest reasons I'm happy with the increasing competition in the budget segments is that they're starting to make the 'right' sacrifices, slightly negating the distinctive features and advantages of flagship phones. Flagship phones will either have to adapt (introducing more useful features and not extra camera-bloat), or people will just keep buying the cheaper ones.
350 dollars is "budget"?
I held on to an old 5x for what felt like forever until the 3a came around. I've zero interest in the high end phone market, I'm sort of horrified at 6, 7, $800+ the prices, and I feel like I use fewer and fewer apps all the time. Hopefully google with the 'a' models and Apple with the SE will stick with the mid range products.