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The tech specs between the 3a and 3 don't show too much of a downgrade: * Screen is smaller, but on the Pixel 3a XL version the screen dimensions excluding the
by manfredo 8y ago
The tech specs between the 3a and 3 don't show too much of a downgrade:
* Screen is smaller, but on the Pixel 3a XL version the screen dimensions excluding the notch appear to be the same.
* Same 4GB LPDDR4 RAM, but no 128GB persistent storage option on the 3a. 64GB is usually plenty anyway, though.
* Processor is somewhat slower: Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 670 2.0GHz + 1.7GHz, 64Bit Octa-Core on the 3a. vs a Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ 845 2.5GHz + 1.6GHz, 64Bit Octa-Core on the pixel 3.
* 3a removes wireless charging. Never used it on my Pixel 3 XL.
* Under the sensors section, the normal Pixel 3 has "Advanced x-axis haptics for sharper/defined response" whereas the 3a does not.
* 3a only has one front facing camera instead of dual front cameras.
* 3a has a headphone jack. Personally, I adjusted pretty well to Bluetooth headsets but some people really appreciate the jack.
Overall seems like a modest downgrade for a big drop in price. Most of the stuff cut out seems like premium features where the dollar-to-user-value ratio isn't very good. The only significant downgrades seem to be processor speed and dropping the second front facing camera. It's probably also safe to assume more economical build materials and fabrication. Specs taken from Google Play store:
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_3a_specs https://store.google.com/product/pixel_3a_specs
https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_3_specs?hl=en-US https://store.google.com/us/product/pixel_3_specs?hl=en-US
- bluedino 8y agoThanks to Pixel 3 discounts, the 3a is only $200 less (or 33%)
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y agoDifference is less even than that if you got it a couple of weeks ago. My Pixel 3 cost $450, and it's the 128GB. If I could have gotten the 64GB, it would have been only $400, which is the same price as the Pixel 3a?
- kjsbfkjbf 8y agoWhat discounts are these?
- modwilliam 8y agoPixel 3a will also be getting discounts, though. It's only launch and you can already get a $100 gift card at best buy with it
- avtar 8y agoI'm really glad that it has a headphone jack but I wish they had placed it at the bottom. I'm nitpicking but after going from a Nexus to an iPhone (when they used to have headphone jacks) it just made sense to not see the cable dangling near the top of the display.
- pound 8y agoScreen is bigger on 3a (vs 3). Also there is no Visual Core on 3a.
- manfredo 8y agoWhat does the visual core do? Also it looks like the pixel 3a's GPU is downgraded to Adreno 615 from Adreno 630 on pixel 3.
- pound 8y agohttps://en.wikichip.org/wiki/google/pixel_visual_core https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/google/pixel_visual_core It would be interesting to compare photo/video performance between 3 and 3a (slower GPU, slower CPU, no dedicated Visual Core). Saying 'it has the same camera' in this case essentially means only the same lens and software.
- throwayEngineer 8y ago>3a has a headphone jack. Personally, I adjusted pretty well to Bluetooth headsets but some people really appreciate the jack. I've been buying old Pixel OG phones. One had a broken screen after leaving it in my backpack hiking(and leaving rocks near it), another from water damage. My wife got one with my recommendation. 4 OG pixels. Why? Fast + aux cable. I can see myself upgrading to a 3a.
- tw04 8y agoThe 670 is a far bigger downgrade than you indicate. Yes it's "only" 20% slower from a pure clock speed perspective, but performance is more like half. It's also missing the IP68 certification - after having a waterproof-ish phone, I would never go back.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoHow does it compare to the OG Pixel or the Nexus 5?
- thaumasiotes 8y ago3a to N5: Wider (left-to-right) by a millimeter or two. Double the RAM. More storage capacity. Two quad-core CPUs which are each somewhat slower (2.0GHz + 1.7GHz) than the N5's one (also quad-core) CPU (2.26 GHz). I'm vaguely curious what the difference is between "one quad-core CPU" and "two 2-core CPUs". I missed my Nexus 5 so badly since it failed catastrophically and Google shut down the product line. This seems like a return to form, hopefully. The internal speaker was a notable weakness of the Nexus 5 for things like playing music; no idea whether the 3a is better or worse.
- akhilcacharya 8y agoI loved my N5 to death until it fell victim to the power button issue - I’m tempted by this but concerned by the 670. If it’s faster than the 821 in the Original Pixel I’m probably sold...if it’s equivalent I might just have to get the Pixel 1 for cheap.
- thaumasiotes 8y agoOriginal Pixel: dual-core 2.15 GHz + dual-core 1.6 GHz Pixel 3a: quad-core 2.0GHz + quad-core 1.7 Ghz If you're doing 8 different things, probably better? Based purely on clock speed, it looks like the original Pixel is slower than the N5. Based on speed and core count... it still looks like that. It seems kind of hard to believe, though. Anecdotally, I replaced my N5 (4x 2.26 GHz) with a OnePlus 3 (2x 2.2 GHz + 2x 1.6 GHz) and I was impressed by how the OnePlus 3 seemed smoother and faster compared to the N5. Possibly the difference was more based on RAM (2GB for the N5, 6GB for the OnePlus 3). I have no experience with the Pixel. I picked up a cheap one with the intention of installing LineageOS when they announced support for it... but it seems the Pixel's USB port has some kind of problem that prevents my computer from recognizing it. So it's just been sitting around, unused.
- Diederich 8y ago> * 3a only has one front facing camera instead of dual front cameras. Can take a wag at characterizing how much of an impact this would have on normal, day to day picture taking? My wife and I are still on Pixel 1s, and we still love the camera. Am I safe to assume that the single camera (and associated hardware/software that Google provides) on the Pixel 3a will be substantially better than the camera on the Pixel 1? Thanks!
- frosted-flakes 8y agoNote that this is the front camera, which most people only use for video calling and selfies. Personally, I've never used the front camera, so it having only a single lens doesn't really matter to me. Any serious photography will probably be with the rear dual-lens camera.
- Diederich 8y agoAh, dumb mis-read on my part. Correct, that's a non-issue for us. Thank you!
- gwilkes 8y agoTo be clear there is only one lens on the rear of this pixel and every other pixel ever made. They have never had a dual-lens rear camera. The Pixel 3 had a front dual-camera but still just a single rear camera.
- CarVac 8y agoIt has image stabilization and a less flare-prone design than the Pixel 1's camera which looks directly through the back glass.
- Supermighty 8y agoThe price is nice, but what is the lifetime compared to something costlier. A S10+ cost almost twice as long, but if it lasts twice as long then it's a wash. Though, Google still wins when it comes to updates. Even given that project treble would make the process easier, I doubt that Samsung will really take advantage of it.
- mtgx 8y agoI would've preferred the much newer Snapdragon 675 with Cortex-A76 vs the A73 in the Snapdragon 670. Some Xiaomi phones have already launched with it for $200. But Google didn't seem to care enough for that change, despite the fact that the new chip also has much better ML performance, too.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Youden 8y agoI think this looks like a better deal when you compare it to the flagships but you have to remember that flagship prices have been exploding and midrange has thriving competition. For $280, right this second, you can buy a Pocophone F1 from Amazon which has essentially the same size screen as the Pixel 3 XL, 6GB RAM, an SD845, an SD card slot and decent support from Xiaomi so far. Hell, the beastly Razer Phone 2 is only $499 right now and has some crazy specs relative to the 3a XL. I know I'm dreaming but Google needs to get back to what made it great in the first place: Put flagship specs into midrange priced phones.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y agoThat said, a lot of people (myself included) buy Google flagship phones because they get Android OS and Google Service upgrades (like Assistant) the fastest. Many of us have been burned by other Android vendors who put a layer of turd on top of stock Android.
- richardhod 8y agoThat's a good point, but there are other vendors, like the reborn Nokia, that use stock Android One, no crap on top. And these come with the latest stock Google Android OS, (oreo, milkshake, fries, whatever the latest one is) and upgrades.
- kyriakos 8y agoYou essentially pay for the software upgrade gurrantee by Google.
- Bud 8y agoPocophone F1? Sure, if you want to trust all your most personal info to Xiaomi. I don't know any security folks who consider that a rational choice anymore. I don't want Beijing having that info on me, plus the ability to surveil me at any time.
- blacksmith_tb 8y agoIt is supported by LineageOS, at least[1]. I have been using one as a daily driver for the past week, and though the hardware is nice otherwise, the band support in the US is poor. 1: https://download.lineageos.org/beryllium https://download.lineageos.org/beryllium
- biotech 8y ago> * 3a has a headphone jack. Personally, I adjusted pretty well to Bluetooth headsets but some people really appreciate the jack. For me, phones lacking a headphone jack is an absolute deal-breaker; the result is that I feel that there is a limited selection for new phones. This feature alone makes the 3a a huge upgrade regardless of the other features.
- manfredo 8y agoA nice pair of bluetooth headphones makes a pretty big different. I got a HD 4.40BT, and it's very good. Battery life is impressive and charges quickly. I can skip tracks, pause, adjust volume without taking out my phone. I don't have to dig into my pocket when I want to listen to something. Audio quality is not noticeably different from my wired headphones at a similar price. It does mean that I have 4 pairs of headphones relegated to desktop and piano use, but the convenience factor was well worth it to me. https://en-us.sennheiser.com/wireless-headphones-bluetooth-hd-4-40-btUS847&oq=hd440&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.727j0j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 https://en-us.sennheiser.com/wireless-headphones-bluetooth-h...
- ramses0 8y agoI agree with you here. I am also negative on loss of the headphone jack, but switching to primarily wireless audio has had quite a bit of network-effect positive benefits.
- roywiggins 8y agoI can skip tracks, pause, adjust volume without taking out my phone There's absolutely no reason why wired headphones can't do that, you can buy ones with three-button inline controls. Ye olde Walkman could do it.
- manfredo 8y agoThree button inline controls usually gets you pause, volume up and volume down. This is essentially 5 buttons: pause, forward, back, volume +, volume -. Sure there are probably wired headphones that have the same control capability, but I've encountered them rarely if ever.
- ZeroCool2u 8y agoAlso, it loses the Pixel Visual Core that the Pixel 3(XL) has.
- OkGoDoIt 8y agoThis seems like a major issue given they are doing more and more machine learning inference on-device and android is trying to standardize on a framework for on-device ML inference. Assuming that the Pixel Visual Core is a generic tensor processing unit similar to what the iPhone has. It’s possible I’ve got some things confused here. The important question is does the 3a have a hardware accelerated ML inference chip or is it just GPU?
- tssva 8y agoNo and no. It doesn't contain a hardware accelerated ML inference chip. The Qualcomm 670 chipset used with the 3a includes the Qualcomm Hexagon 685 DSP which provides vector processing acceleration for ML workloads, so also not just GPU.
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago> 3a has a headphone jack. Well, shit, I might have to buy one now.
- sridca 8y agoHow does the camera quality compare, especially Night Sight?
- neogodless 8y agoCheck the Anandtech.com quick take. The gist is that the camera is the same. Startup is a bit slower, and so is special effects processing like HDR, and presumably Night Sight. But the image quality should be nearly identical to the Pixel 3/XL.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoIsn't the 3 water resistant but the 3a is not? I don't have a water resistant phone, but that's actually a feature I wouldn't mind paying more for.
- chias 8y agoIt probably has something to do with the headphone jack. It's hard to drill holes into something and make it water resistant.
- onlyrealcuzzo 8y agoI don't know anything about hardware. What's so different about a headphone jack verses a USBc port?
- PascLeRasc 8y agoNothing electrically that impacts waterproofing, but if the headphone jack straddles the front and back covers mechnical sealing will be harder. I think USB should actually be more difficult to waterproof, since there's more spaces for drops of water to stick vs a "hole", the pins are closer to make shorting easier, and there's higher voltages being passed over the pins when charging. The only thing I can think of is that surface tension of water would prevent droplets from forming in a tiny dense USB-C port and not so in a 3.5mm jack, but that's a bit of a stretch.
- martyvis 8y agoI have a LG V30+ that has USB-C and a head phone jack. It has glass front/back with a continuous metal edge band ( except for the antenna insulators). It has a IP68 waterproof rating. ( It's basically the same hardware as Pixel 2XL)
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoMy Moto x4 has a headphone jack, is water resistant, and sells for $120 currently (I paid $200 2 years ago). Spec wise, it's not even that much worse than this phone other than the atrocious camera quality. That camera is really the only reason I ordered the 3a today.
- copperx 8y agoIs the 3a an upgrade or a downgrade from the Pixel 2? That's what I would like to know.
- NeverFade 8y agoSerious question: why would I care about a faster processor, unless I plan to use my phone for something exceptionally demanding? If I don't plan on engaging in these few very specific, highly demanding applications - high-end gaming is really the only one that comes to mind - would I really need much processing power to run the handful of apps like email and instant messaging that most people seem to use their phone for? Even games would likely run fine as long as they're the casual ones most users play. I suspect high-end processors are really only useful for the top 1% (if that) of folks who want to play high-end games, and as such they seem like a great place to cut costs.
- sixothree 8y agoFurthering your point, the amount of speed improvement to make the processor future proof seem to be more than you might get.
- Mindwipe 8y agoQualcomm will drop support for software versions before speed becomes an issue in all likelihood.
- Gorbzel 8y agoSad to see so much gaslighting regarding processor speed. Of course SoC performance matters! The Verge has already reported a Pixel 3a “feels noticeably slower” than a Pixel 3. For years Android devices have lagged Apple’s mobile offerings and most desktop machines by up to 40% not only when it comes to benchmarks, but also in real world and JavaScript performance (…because it’s not like JS is used much these days is why you would care about a faster processor). Also, this reeks of elitism: the technorati crowd in SF who can afford such things get to have flagship devices for their “very specific, highly demanding applications.” Meanwhile, “most users” of the most revolutionary invention of our lifetime only need to use their phones for “email and instant messaging.” Filthy casuals. (Can’t believe the comment actually went there). Call the Pixel 3a what it is: Alphabet’s product marketing teams do an absolutely terrible job leveraging their brand(s) to explain their device offerings or even why they’re making their own hardware. As such, consumer confusion leads to laggard sales of a flagship device. Trying to leverage what they have, Google introduces the Pixel 3a to take on what looks to be a growing midrange market. If it works, more power to ‘em, but let’s focus on facts and price points, not vague assertions about who needs what level of performance masquerading as questions from throwaway accounts.
- planckscnst 8y agoI have yet to have a satisfactory Bluetooth experience even after spending a bunch on what was supposed to be an okay set (Jabra Sport Elite). I'm not extremely picky with earphones. I normally use $10 Panasonic earbuds. The audio quality of any Bluetooth headset I've ever used isn't just bad: it's painful. I'm a little bit amazed at how much other people seem to accept in terms of degraded quality for loosing a little wire and I'm wondering if I just have really bad luck.
- mankyd 8y agoThis sounds like bad luck to me, but who knows. I use a pair of over-ear noise canceling bt headphones, and they sound just fine. I wouldn't call them amazing, but I'm not sure I can tell the difference between them and any other sub $100 headphones. One catch that I noticed: there are two profiles I can connect to my desktop with. One is simple audio streaming (a2dp maybe?) and sounds fine. The other (hsp?) supports microphone input and the sound degrades quite noticeably. Maybe you're connecting via this second mechanism?
- dethac 8y agoSo the Pixel 3a XL loses out on resolution (the Pixel 3a does not... go figure) vs the Pixel 3 counterpart. The SD670 performs close to the SD835 in CPU, but noticeably worse in CPU. It should be noticeably worse in CPU than the 845 due to its 2+6 configuration rather than the 845's 4+4 configuration. You get eMMC storage with F2FS (acceptable, but slower than UFS 2.0/2.1) You get glass from some Japanese manufacturer instead of Corning. Plastic body (yay!) It's a number of compromises (not minor by any means), but the price is a pretty noticeable drop.
- drusepth 8y agoThanks for the breakdown. One other thing missing on the 3a is water/splash resistance. Personally, of all these bullets the presence of the headphone jack is what made me order one immediately (upgrading from a 5X). I hope all the people complaining about the headphone jack disappearing from other phones put their money where their mouth is and also order phones that _do_ include jacks so criticism of its loss is taken a bit more seriously.
- codeduck 8y agoalso on a 5x which I love, but which is showing its age. Likely to also upgrade to a 3a
- drusepth 8y agoI got my 3a today and it is an amazing upgrade from the 5x. Everything is buttery smooth (the 5x does not come close) and the camera is definitely at least an order of magnitude better. Here's the same picture of my cat from each phone to demonstrate: 5x: https://i.imgur.com/MNtfXQF.jpg https://i.imgur.com/MNtfXQF.jpg 3a: https://i.imgur.com/YGxldxb.jpg https://i.imgur.com/YGxldxb.jpg
- izacus 8y agoThere's one thing you don't mention and it is very important for overall device performance: storage speed. 3a has a cheaper eMMC storage which is showing numbers closer to the original Pixel. Pixels 2 and 3 have faster UFS storage so they'll probably run a bit smoother.
- odiroot 8y agoSo close yet so far, alas. They had an opportunity to win the compact market in 2019 and they decided to go for 150mm+. I'm seriously sad about this. It could have been my next phone for years if only they cut it by 10-12mm.
- antpls 8y agoDoes the 670 have the same AI compute capabilities than the 845 ? Newer Qualcomm chips include dedicated AI processor, which is probably what you would want for the next few years.
- StavrosK 8y agoWhy aren't Xiaomi phones more popular in the US? This is basically a Redmi that costs $150. Don't they support the US bands?
- richardhod 8y agoThis is frequently because people don't trust that there's not spyware in them. Whether there is or not, the Chinese government's control over businesses in its realm is stronger than the American government's, and even less transparent.
- zabana 8y agoCorporate racism mostly. I find it Ironic that people complain about the relationship between xiaomi and the chinese government but will not mention the fact the Google have been spying on their customers for years now. But somehow only foreign companies have nefarious motives.
- terryf 8y agoThe jack is back! Now I wish I hadn't bought the pixel 3 when it came out! Glad to see the voice of reason prevailing.