350 dollars is "budget"?
This is the reason why "free phone" plans are so popular. IMO, it's always lower TCO to unbundle these "deals", but so many people only care about their maximum monthly cost.
That said, I do appreciate Google's "a" variant of their recent phones for the emphasis on practicality and usability (headphone jack, battery capacity), and the $349 price tag doesn't seem extravagant for what you're getting. Mostly, I just wish they came in a smaller size.
At 350$, if you use it for 3 years (which is the minimum number of years it gets updates for), you would basically be paying more for your Netflix subscription than for your phone. And I'd wager most people use their phone much more than they do their Netflix.
it depends on how long you want to keep the phone for. I bought my phone in 2017 ago for £400 and I pay £8 a month to a carrier to get an allowance of data + calls every month (not a contract, I'm free to cancel any time) so it's worked out at about £18 a month if you amortise the initial outlay.
obviously contracts are more expensive, and can sometimes, albeit rarely, be cheaper, you just need to do the maths.
the bigger advantage to buying a phone outright is you're free to switch network/carrier as the phones are unlocked, at least in the UK anyway.
The competing Apple variant (lower res HDish screen but much faster CPU) is the iPhone SE 128GB for $449. It will probably get OS updates for 5 years which works out to $7.48 per month.
5.3 being newer than the 7.2, but down one class in "feature set"?
- phone batteries basically on last 2 years or less (iPhones are rated to 80% capacity after 500 cycles), which means your phone will last 4/5 as long as it did when new and possibly shut off prematurely in cold/hot temperatures unless you pay for a battery replacement ($50-100+)
- since we bring phones with us pretty much anywhere, a random fall in a pool, an unforseen rain storm, or butterfingers over a hard surface could end up destroying your phone well before those points.
While the SE (2020) certainly has more potential life than the 4a, both phones become fairly useless after 3 years due to the battery concern anyway and might not make it that far depending on who's using them. At that point, the 64GB larger storage, nicer screen, better camera, and $50 lower price of the 4a becomes a competitive advantage.
It's more valuable than my car (to me).