Google – Pixel 3a X-Large with 64GB Memory Cell Phone (Unlocked) – Just Black (G020C)

I switched from Samsung Galaxy to the Google Pixel because I wanted a better camera, and I definitely got better quality photos though it seems I don’t have as many options for editing the photos on the Pixel, like adding stickers, etc. Reading the reviews, the notch was a big deal to some people but I don’t notice it at all. I found it awkward to take screenshots – how do you hold the power and volume buttons at the same time when they’re on the same side of the phone? On the Samsung they were on opposite sides so much easier. I accidentally discovered that I can just swipe up and get a screenshot button to press. I didn’t find that tip in any of the help sites. Adding the emoji icon to the phone keyboard shortcuts was something else I figured out by accident. You’d think it would be there already. I like the call screening feature! It’s easy and works great. I find the battery doesn’t last as long as I would like, but I guess that’s to be expected from a new Pixel 3 XL that I bought more than three years after it was released in 2018. It does charge very fast and it was super easy to transfer apps from my Samsung using the cord that came in the box. I thought the larger size might be a problem being a petite person, but it fits my hand just fine. For using basic apps and taking photos and videos, I would recommend buying this phone. It was 1/5 of the original price so definitely worth it.

Really happy with this phone so far. Had been using a Galaxy S8+ the last few years and was looking for something new, with better battery life (I was usually get 12-14hrs on my S8). So far the 3a XL hasn’t disappointed! Yesterday I went to bed with the phone at 37% battery after being unplugged for 17 hours and had over 5 hours of screen on time (still had another 8 hours in the tank according to the phone). My only complaint is with the Pixel launcher which forces you into having the Google search bar and what’s happening widget in your homescreen all the time. Can’t be removed…. Considering I was looking for the ‘true’ Android experience I was floored that they won’t let you change that. Oh well, went to the Play store, grabbed Nova launcher and all is well! Performance is great and the camera is fantastic (especially the night site feature).

After several years of growing tired of my Samsung Galaxy work phones getting slower and more bloated with the Samsung UI, I was convinced by coworkers to go to a Pixel. I got the Pixel 3 XL and instantly loved it. Seconds, rather than minutes, to boot. A fast UI experience. Frequent and comprehensive OS updates that aren’t lagging months behind the Android updates. A fantastic camera. What’s not to love?

Even though I refer to my Pixel 3 XL as my work phone, the truth is that I haven’t had a personal phone in over a decade… who wants to carry two phones? Then again, there is something to be said about having a healthy work/life balance. With that in mind, I was curious when I heard about the 3a coming to the market… as much as I love the 3 XL, I can’t say that I was super excited to spend $900 on a phone. When the 3a XL dropped below $300 (after the deal that gave you a $100 GC), it seemed like a no brainer.

As someone that has both a 3XL and a 3a XL, here’s what I can tell you:
SCREEN
Unlike the 3 XL, the 3a XL has no screen “notch”. Where there are some parts of the UI that take advantage of the notch, there are just as many applications that leave an annoying color (non-black) artifact in the notch area when watching landscape full-screen video – it’s SUPER annoying. The 3a XL’s screen is slightly smaller than the 3 XL, and while it’s also a little lower resolution, the density (as a result of the smaller diagonal measurement) doesn’t drop that much. In general usage I don’t notice any difference. The 3a’s screen is OLED, but it appears to be a quality tier below the 3 XL’s… you can see it if they are side-by-side, but you wouldn’t notice it if you were going from memory.

CAMERA
Pixel phones are renown for their camera performance. While the raw specs tend to be behind other flagship phones’ optics and CCDs, the actual picture quality tends to be at or near the top of the heap. The Pixel 3a XL is no different, as the rear camera is the same as the one on the 3 XL. The front camera (which I really don’t care as much about) goes with a single, rather than a dual, camera setup. It’s not the same as either front-facing camera on the Pixel 3 XL, but the software (which is largely responsible for the picture quality), is the same. Both cameras appear to be excellent.

FORM FACTOR
The Pixel 3a XL is slightly larger than the Pixel 3 XL. Some of it may be due to the notch-less screen causing the speaker and camera to be mounted above the screen. Some may be due to the larger capacity battery. Perhaps it’s also influenced by the case material on the back being made of plastic, rather than glass. Regardless, the phone is about 10% lighter, which is enough to be noticable. An omission that I don’t love is that the 3a XL does not support wireless chaging… it’s not the end of the world, but it is missed.

PERFORMANCE
The 3a XL does have a significantly slower CPU than the 3 XL. The layout of both processors is to have 4 high speed cores, and 4 slower cores. The general idea is that the system workloads can be managed by the OS’es thread scheduler, and be placed on to the lowest power consuming core that is still adequate for the job. Both phones are fine with multitasking. I didn’t actually notice any performance difference is the UI or in application speeds, but I also am not a mobile gamer… I would expect for the difference to be most obvious there (assuming there is one). I was a little surprised when the 3 XL came out with 4GB of RAM (since I didn’t know if that would be enough), but that worked out well. The 3a XL has the same 4GB of RAM and therefore has similar performance.

NOTABLE DIFFERENCES NOT ALEADY MENTIONED
Oddly, the Pixel 3a XL has a headphone jack. That’s noteworthy because the 3 XL does NOT have a headphone jack. I know there are some “purists” that are anti-bluetooth, but I’d say that a phone is not an audiophile platform anyway. Even if you have awesome $1500 headphones, I can still tell you that the DAC in your sub-170 gram phone is junk (comparatively). One of the really nice features of the Pixel 3 XL is that it’s waterproof… the 3a XL is not. It’s not a dealbreaker for me, but I can see where this would affect some peoples’ choices.

In conclusion, I thought the deal I got on Amazon when I bought my 3a XL was so good that I bought the phone without even knowing if I’d get a service plan for it. Now that the 3a XL is at its “normal” price I still think it’s an incredible deal, and I really question anyone who would buy a different phone at this device’s price point. Highly Recommended.

I was an early adopter of Google’s phones when they came out with the Nexus line. Unfortunately, I never bought a Pixel because Google chose, at first, to compete with the expensive flagship phones that cost $800 or more being put out by Apple and Samsung every year. That has since changed, and I’m a welcome convert back to the Google fold.

My last phone was a Moto Z Play, which I purchased for $400 about three and a half years ago. I loved the battery life, but the bluetooth died almost entirely when the phone was two years old, and the camera was never great. By the time I had had it for three years, I couldn’t run more than two or three apps without experiencing issues with crashing. Likewise, if I opened more than 50 or so tabs in the web browser, it would typically crash. It’s a relief to no longer have those issues.

COST: I purchased this phone when it was $320, so I already saved $80 over my last phone purchase. This phone does everything you need and looks sharp. It doesn’t have 5G, but the amount of features you get for less than $400 more than justifies the price.

CAMERA: Google has really outdone itself with the Pixel 3a’s. The camera is fantastic; I no longer need to bring a dedicated digital camera when I’m traveling or attending major celebrations like graduations that need a good camera. It’s performance in low-light conditions is fantastic and really something to write home about. Sure, my brother’s iPhone 11 Pro has a better camera, but he paid over $1000 for it, so that’s not a fair comparison. I’d say that the Pixel 3A’s camera and camera software is every bit as good as my wife’s Galaxy 10, if not better.

BATTERY LIFE: A full charge doesn’t last the 2-3 days that my old Moto Z Play did, but the rapid charging feature makes it not matter as much. In my daily commute of 20-30 minutes to work, I can add about 30-40% to my battery, which means I never have to worry about my phone going dead, even if I forget to charge it at night. A full charge tends to last a little over a day with heavy use. For the record, nearly every day I browse the internet for hours, play Sudoku, listen to Spotify, and post and browse on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

HARDWARE: It’s not a flagship phone, so it’s not going to hold up to intensive use. That said, nothing I’ve thrown at it so far as crashed it. Like I said, I’m a heavy phone user. I don’t have to close my apps before switching to another one like I did with my last phone to avoid crashes. I also have experienced hangs like I did with my last phone either. This really does everything you need it to do. I don’t think that a normal to heavy phone user needs much more power than this unless they’re gaming or photo editing on their phone or something. The bluetooth works a lot better than my old phones did. I have an aging 2013 Prius that does not like to play nice with bluetooth in a lot of my devices. I get in the car, and the phone automatically hooks to the bluetooth and brings up my last Spotify podcast without me fussing with it past the initial setup. I forgot how nice it was when things just worked, you know?

LOOK & FEEL: I really like that it’s lighter than my last phone even though the screen and the screen’s resolution is much larger. It doesn’t have a trendy notch, but I don’t really care. The fingerprint is located in a nice place in the back that feels very intuitive. There is a feature that lets you squeeze the phone to bring up Google Assistant that I could see some people enjoying, but I never use it because my hands are too small to put enough pressure on the phone to bring it up. Some people may dock a point or two for this, if it’s important to you. I don’t because I can just shout “hey google” at the phone to the same effect, and perhaps the feature works fine if you don’t have tiny baby hands like me and buy a phone that’s over 6 inches. The phone itself is mostly metal and glass and doesn’t feel cheap. I don’t think it looks like you spent less than $400 on it at all. Most importantly, it still has an aux port. Not all of us want the hassle of charging and keeping track of bluetooth earbuds that can cost more than your phone and don’t sound any better than a $10 wired headset you can get at the pharmacy. The screen is absolutely huge and the resolution makes everything tiny. I don’t have bad eyes and I’m not an old maid, but I had to set the text size to “large” otherwise every website looks like those old Myspace profiles people made back in 2002 with size-6 font. It’s very comfortable to read on; I don’t feel like someone would need a dedicated tablet with a phone with a screen this big.

SOFTWARE & OS/UI: If you’re getting an Android OS, you’ve probably fine with the OS. That said, Google’s UI is so much better than everyone else’s (I’ve used UIs by Asus, Samsung, and Motorola in other phones). The home screen is easier to customize, the app launcher makes sense, and the app switcher is intuitive and quick. Since it’s Google, you’ll have the newest Android OS’s at launch and support for longer than other manufacturers. That was one thing I missed dearly about my old Nexus, and I’m glad Google is finally back in the sub-$500 market again so I can take advantage of it. I think my favorite feature about the UI is that I can turn on “dark mode” 24/7 so that I never have white bars or menus anywhere, just nice black ones. It’s really saved my eyes. I also like that the volume and brightness on the phone has a very wide range of levels, much moreso than any other phone I’ve had before, which always had “silent,” “soft-ish” and “extremely loud” with little in between. I can turn down the volume to almost-silent and the brightness to actually quite dark without installing third party apps. Also, there’s no bloatware on the phone when you purchase it. That’s really nice.

All in all, it’s a very solid phone and I’m honestly thrilled with how nice the screen and camera is at this price-point. Everything else I’ve looked at with comparable specs and features is at least $100 more. I’ve been using mine for the past couple of weeks, and every day I like it more. Full five stars from me.