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Comment by manfredo | Hacker News Reader

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/us/product/pixel_3_specs?hl=en-US

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> * 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.

A 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-h...

I 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.

I 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.

Three 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.

I have literally never encountered a 3 button wired headphone that didn't have that capability. I have gone through many due to heavy usage.

And I've gone through at least three 3-button headphones that have only worked with volume and pause. I suppose one could use the volume for track control with some sort of special logic, like a longer button hold. But I've never encountered that. The Bluetooth headphones I have actually has another set of capabilities which is to not only skip or go back in terms of tracks but also fast forward and rewind within a track - very useful for podcasts.

It's usually long hold or double/triple tap and you get track forward/back. The iPhone buds do it for example. You probably never read the manual :)

The standard iPhone headphones since the 1g support all those. Click to pause, double click for forward, triple click for back. Long press on the second or third click for rewind/fast forward.

5 logical buttons with 3 physical buttons was something of a standard since time immemorial - the volume+/- buttons doubled up as next/previous when you held them.

The wired earbuds on my minidisc even had a little inline screen to display the current track.

Aww man, that just took me down memory lane. Minidisc was, imo, the peak of portable music players. Huge capacity, swappable/tradeable media, excellent sound quality, the little inline screen you mentioned. A quick Amazon search shows they're still available.

There are still simple MP3 players around, with SD card slots.

So you can have lots of music with you ... and have a smaller device and be able to jump around with it

Adding a battery to something that didn’t have one previously literally decimated the expected time until it ends up in a landfill/the ocean.

For an actual set of headphones with a decent size battery, they can still be useful for many years even if the capacity drops to 50%. Tiny things like AirPods are crazy though. When they're brand new the battery life is barely enough, when they're a year or two old it sounds like a giant nuisance.

Apple just launched the more fitness-targeted Powerbeats Pro with a bigger battery, but the charging case to accommodate the "around ear" design is enormous compared to AirPods.

And now reviewers are excusing that saying "Yeah it's a huge case, but the battery life is probably good enough that maybe you could leave the case at home!" As if the battery life three years from now will be anywhere near 9 hours.

EDIT: Two articles posted on 9to5mac by literally the same person a couple of months apart:

https://9to5mac.com/2019/01/28/airpods-battery-life/

> But batteries are consumable, we all know so well now, and that’s proven true for the tiny batteries inside AirPods after two years of daily use. Battery life that once exceeded five hours now struggles to power AirPods through three hours of continuous usage at the same volume. Battery life results can be cut in half if you need to play audio at a louder volume.

> In practice, I used to never hear the low battery alert during usage. I rarely listened to audio with AirPods for five straight hours before charging in the carrying case without thought. More recently, I’ve heard the bloop sound much more regularly, frequently followed by AirPods dying before I’m ready to recharge.

https://9to5mac.com/2019/05/06/beats-powerbeats-pro-hands-on...

> AirPods give you up to 5 hours of power in between charges; Powerbeats Pro almost double that with up to 9 hours of power in between charges. The additional four hours might mean you only need to take the earphones out of the house for the day with the charging case left at home.

Talk about a lack of foresight.

On 9to5mac in 2021: "The batteries in my Powerbeats Pro only last four hours and I have to carry this gigantic charging case everywhere. HOW COULD I HAVE KNOWN???"

And for a comparison point versus real headphones, Sony’s USB-C charged WH-1000XM3 is rated for 30 hours with noise cancellation on, 38 hours without. But those aren’t something I’d carry around all the time, so I’m happy to keep using wired earbuds where battery life isn’t even a question.

Reduced it by %10? I think you might un-xaggerating! I agree with the sentiment however.

I think it's valid to describe a reduction to 1/10th as a literal use of "decimate", even if it doesn't match historical usage.

Did you really mean 'literally decimated'? See the Roman history that led to this word. I share the disambiguation to show other uses: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimation

> Battery life is impressive

How long is that with a brand new battery?

Easily 4-5 days without recharging, with consistent use throughout the day. Official estimate is 25 hours of continuous use, I get around 20.

I just charge my headphone where I charge my phone, and never worry about batter life. Even if battery is reduced to 50% capacity it wouldn't affect my usage.

Meanwhile, 20 hours would be irritating to me on long days, and 10 hours (probably a few hundred cycles/less than a year) would interrupt my work and concentration daily. Just goes to show how the inconvenience varies between people.

It is not impressive, but it is acceptable (considering I never need to charge mine).

>I got a HD 4.40BT, and it's very good.

And how long will it be very good? Bluetooth headphones seem to represent a huge change in standards of support.

To use an example from the same company, I have an HD 280 pro, which I bought well over a decade ago. I can go on Sennheiser's website, and buy replacement ear cushions or replacement head band pads. It looks like the replacement cable is no longer easily available, but it was sold for a number of years, and replacing the proprietary cable (criticized in many reviews at the time) with a standard one (or a jack) is not that hard.

For a new example, all parts that might break outside the core of my Etymotic ER4SRs have replacement parts, and all can be very easily replaced.

A search for replacement batteries for the HD 4.40BT, on the other hand, comes up with nothing except the user manual's admonition that battery replacement by anyone other than Sennheiser will void the entire warranty (something that seems likely to be illegal in many places), and noting that instructions are available (outside of warranty) only for "qualified service centers." There are instructions in the manual about replacing the ear pads, but ear pads don't seem to show up on Sennheiser's website, which is rather surprising, considering that a search for the 2000s-era 280s easily comes up with replacements; wider searches come up only with poorly-reviewed cheap third party replacements. There is a replacement cable, but then again, it's just a standard cable. Replacement batteries don't appear to be available anywhere.

So when the battery starts dying, are you expected to throw them away? Use them until you become frustrated enough to buy new ones, and throw the otherwise decent ones away? Hope that Sennheiser will replace the battery for less than the price of new headphones?

If your hand is forced to go wireless I can recommend the Fiio BT receivers. You can keep using your favourite headphones, sounds pretty good, far cheaper than BT headphones.

https://www.fiio.com/bluetooth_products

Nice. I was thinking about getting an independent DAC. This solves a couple of problems for me.

>Support for Bluetooth 5.0 and SBC/AAC/aptX/aptX LL audio codecs

Wow! That's excellent (no mention of aptX HD, though). I wonder how much of the purchase price is going in licensing fees though. AAC requires one, aptX requires one, plus DRM.

The BTR3 supports aptX HD. This is the slightly larger model. It can also be used as a DAC when plugged into your computer.

The smaller one doesn’t support some codecs but it is really cheap, like 30USD.

But then I have to charge it.

I know, I know—of course you have to charge it, no crap, but this is why Bluetooth will never be a replacement for me. It's too much extra complication in my life. I just want a pair of headphones that I can throw into my pocket and will never need to be charged and will work with all my devices without any additional adapters.

That’s why I said “If you are forced”.

This is the best solution so far for those of us with a collection of wired headphones. Can be used while charging, cheap, works really well.

Being able to be used while charging is nice, since then you can at least charge at the same time you charge your phone.

And they even had the audacity to tease Apple about the headphone jack being still present on the 1st Pixel just to remove it themselves on the 2nd and 3rd.

That's what I thought too, but then I just bought enough $10 usb-c to headphone dongles for all of the headphones I usually use (one at home, one at work one in the car and one in my backpack). iPhone dongles work on the Pixel too.

Sucks to have to pay $40 just to restore the functionality of the headphone jack, but kept it from being a dealbreaker.

I don't particularly trust them though. instead of just audio, some cheap dongle maker gets full USB access to my phone

Doesn't your phone limit that unless you tell it otherwise? Or do you just mean it has physical bus access?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/07/this-...

USB is fundamentally broken and insecure. It simply isn't possible to keep a bad actor who plugs in from hijacking your system ports.

Maybe you should re-evaluate this position, if it's severely limiting your phone selection.

It's telling that the marketing page doesn't highlight the headphone jack even though it's a feature that most people want and most reviewers note. They don't want to admit that they "bravely" (stupidly) jumped off a bridge twice in a row with the Pixel 2 and Pixel 3 just because their supposed competitor did it.

So true! When I got my Pixel 2 XL I wanted to bite my a for not having checked for a jack upfront. It kind of works with an adapter, I still prefer jacks so.

The 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.

How does it compare to the OG Pixel or the Nexus 5?

3a 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.

I 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.

Original 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.

You can compare the phones here: https://store.google.com/magazine/compare_pixel

Do most mobile users encounter applications where processor speed is the limiting factor? Almost all smartphone usage in my experience is bottle necked by network IO. I don't really use my phone for gaming or anything intensive - I guess people expect their phones to run Fortnite these days so maybe processor speed is more important.

yes

> I don't really use my phone for gaming or anything intensive

Let me be the first to tell you that for many, many people, smartphones are their primary computing platforms, and they do everything on them. I've had to help people file taxes on smart phones, sign documents, and more. Processor speed isn't important now so much as it is later. A good portion of the budget market is going to grab a phone because of the price and hold on to it for years. Will a 20% slower processor stand up as well as its bigger cousin in the future? Probably less so.

Sure but then primary computer for most people don't need that much computing power. It's mostly about documents and communication. People who really need more processing power are either tech/gaming enthusiasts or professionals, and for sure this device isn't aimed for them.

It's been fun watching this line be repeated for 30 years without getting more correct.

Normal users need good performance too, but the bottom end of the market is always saturated with completely unsuitable crap. A safe way to look at it is that most users need roughly the power of a 2 year old flagship device. That has been true for many years as well.

There aren't many benchmarks yet, but the Snapdragon 670's performance is roughly between the Snapdragon 821 and 835, which were the flagships just 3 and 2 years ago.

> It's been fun watching this line be repeated for 30 years without getting more correct.

It absolutely is getting more correct. I used to update my desktop every year or two. I'm now still on a Core i5 2500 from 2011 and have zero reason to upgrade again, even despite some gaming use.

For phones, it's a bit different because they're back on the part of the performance curve where desktops were years ago and power efficiency is still improving rapidly but I think they're getting close to that crossover point.

It seems like for every desktop user who's still on a Sandy Bridge or whatever, there's a user asking for N*2 RAM where N is the maximum currently amount of memory available in a laptop.

I find that both statements are correct. 10-year old processors are still fast enough (I'm using one) but we need more RAM in 2019 than we needed in 2010.

> It's been fun watching this line be repeated for 30 years without getting more correct.

The average user can comfortably use a 5 year old pc even today, ofcourse with an SSD upgrade.

Even a 10 year old PC (assuming it wasn't low-end at time of purchase), with a SSD, is still good enough for most people.

For me, I'm planning on getting a Pixel 3a. The talk of it being like a "2 year old flagship" sounds great to me, not a detriment at all. I'm upgrading from a Honor 8, which is an almost 3 year old mid-range phone, so the Pixel 3a will be a decent upgrade, even though the performance of my Honor 8 is still perfectly good. I'm mainly upgrading for the camera, 3 years of software updates and because my Honor 8's Bluetooth is becoming less reliable over time.

Loads of chromebooks ship with Rockchip processors sporting A17 chips at 1.7GHz. They can do all those web things just fine. The A73 at 2.0GHz will blow that performance away.

The limiting factor of a cellphone as a primary computer platform is actually lack of keyboard and screen space. Computing power for most people has been fine for years now.

I do regularly game on my phone, and I'm still quite happy with a three-year-old iPhone 6s. The vast majority of mobile games don't require advanced specs, and even if I played Fortnite I wouldn't play it on a damn phone.

Apple has been multiple generations ahead of Qualcomm in both graphics and processing for years and years. That's not really a valid comparison.

But not modems. They're still the top there, and competitors seem unable to beat them; can any one provide insight as to why? Maybe Apple will do in-house development and succeed with that.

Modems are hard.

Apple already is doing in-house development; that's why they poached the head of Intel's in-house wireless modem chip team. But they clearly don't have a product yet, or Apple wouldn't have paid several billion dollars to Qualcomm to settle up.

Doesn’t Qualcomm protect their modems with a giant firewall of patents? I’d wager it’s hard to make a good modem without violating (or being forced to license) at least a few of their patents.

Apple chips actually fall behind current Qualcomm chips in most GPU benchmarks now. They still have a lead in core CPU performance but the gap there has narrowed considerably.

>Apple chips actually fall behind current Qualcomm chips in most GPU benchmarks now

Not sure why you are getting that idea. But that is not true. Even including cases where Qualcomm Adreno 640 used in 855 under some overclocked condition.

And unless something truly magical happens I don't see Qualcomm will catch up, GPU performance scales linearly with Die Size used for GPU, and Apple will forever have the advantage in that area, where Apple are using the SoC themselves and could afford larger die, while Qualcomm makes profits on die and yield of their SoC.

Which iPhone would the 3a be comparable to? I have a couple years old iPhone SE and never had performance issues.

Do most mobile users encounter applications where processor speed is the limiting factor?

By far the heaviest app I use on my phone is the browser. Not the browser per se but some of the websites I visit, especially ecommerce stores.

I mainly use my smartphone to browse web/reddit and for uber/lyft. The drop in performance doesn't really matter when you compare it to the price drop.

My Pixel 3's charging stopped working after a few seconds underwater, so I don't think it's that much of a loss anyway.

Was it salt water? I'm pretty sure salt water will wreck the exposed charging port contacts in seconds on any device, even if it is otherwise waterproof.

Is there a site that has benchmarks of mobile SoCs? I've been using notebookcheck.net, but it doesn't seem like it has benchmarks for the SD 670.

I 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.

That 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.

That'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.

You essentially pay for the software upgrade gurrantee by Google.

Pocophone 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.

It 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

Here's how I look at it:

Google - Wants my data, willing to play the long game, has the scale to properly support security updates

Third party US manufacturers - Wants my data, playing the short game, suspect UI choices

Chinese manufacturers - Wants my data, suspect UI choices, unknown motives with regard to data privacy

Open source OSs - High data privacy, absolutely controllable OS

Weighting between the 4, my threat model prefers a Google phone, despite the privacy downside. Google does creepy things, but ultimately they don't really care if a power user turns off tracking: they only care if everyone turns off tracking.

There's also this company called "Apple" you might want to look into, if privacy is relevant to you. ;)

You have to trust them, though.

They sayy they care about privacy and yes, they make most money on selling devices and not on advertisement, but who guarantees that is not to change any moment?

And aren't they allready in the advertisement buisness as well? So also have a motive for getting and evaluating all your data?

No root. I prefer owning things to leasing them.

Is there actual evidence of wrongdoing on Xiaomi's part? If they're abusing my data it should be trivial to verify by MITMing my device. Can you point to someone who has done this and found something?

Forgive me if I don't take your word for it. There's been a lot of anti-anything-that-isnt-america news going around lately.

Anyhow, as another poster points out, it has LineageOS support, which is what I use.

The point of a flagship phone is to push the envelope, not compete with midrange devices. If someone else is filling the midrange niche better than Google I don't really see a problem, buy that phone instead. Google can better differentiate with a flagship and by doing so pushes the rest of the industry forward on features. These features that were costly to develop will later propagate to midrange.

The Pixel camera is the one feature that's not available in other mid-range devices.

I 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.

This 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?

Thanks 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.

also on a 5x which I love, but which is showing its age. Likely to also upgrade to a 3a

I 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

3a: https://i.imgur.com/YGxldxb.jpg

Serious 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.

Furthering your point, the amount of speed improvement to make the processor future proof seem to be more than you might get.

Qualcomm will drop support for software versions before speed becomes an issue in all likelihood.

Sad 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.

I'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.

On the other hand, when the jack is on the bottom, if you plug in headphones and want to put the phone in your pocket, you have to place it upside down.

Which is the correct way because then you just put hand in your pocket and grab it straight away in correct orientation.

There'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.

So 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.

Isn'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.

It probably has something to do with the headphone jack. It's hard to drill holes into something and make it water resistant.

I don't know anything about hardware. What's so different about a headphone jack verses a USBc port?

Nothing 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.

I 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)

My 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.

> 3a has a headphone jack.

Well, shit, I might have to buy one now.

Also, it loses the Pixel Visual Core that the Pixel 3(XL) has.

This 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?

No 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.

> * 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!

Note 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.

Ah, dumb mis-read on my part. Correct, that's a non-issue for us. Thank you!

To 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.

It has image stabilization and a less flare-prone design than the Pixel 1's camera which looks directly through the back glass.

The 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.

Thanks to Pixel 3 discounts, the 3a is only $200 less (or 33%)

Difference 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?

What discounts are these?

Pixel 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

Is the 3a an upgrade or a downgrade from the Pixel 2? That's what I would like to know.

So 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.

Does 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.

Screen is bigger on 3a (vs 3). Also there is no Visual Core on 3a.

What 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.

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.

Why aren't Xiaomi phones more popular in the US? This is basically a Redmi that costs $150. Don't they support the US bands?

This 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.

Corporate 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.

>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.

I 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.

How does the camera quality compare, especially Night Sight?

Check 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.

The 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.

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