Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 are discontinued, says Google | Hacker News Reader

Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 are discontinued, says Google

technokilo.com

27 pointssarmadsohaib56 comments

Mostly because they're obsoleted and replaced by the freshly released Pixel 5a.

The Pixel 5a is effectively an XL. And there's no non-XL version.

Now the Pixel 5 is discontinued, the only non-XL option is the 4a. I like the 4a a lot, but it's over 12 months old, with a mid-range SoC, so I wouldn't buy a new one now.

This is really frustrating - Google make it fairly difficult to have a decent android phone I can reliably order.

There are tons of other good android phones in the market.

Yes. Samsung have some good phones too.

Am I misreading, or do you frequently purchase more units of the same phone?

They released the 5A and are coming out with the 6 soon. What's the issue?

https://www.theverge.com/2021/8/17/22627253/google-pixel-5a-...

The model lifetime is too short. You can't get any idea of medium term reliability (as a proxy for long term reliability) until when the phones are discontinued.

I'm by no means a google booster, but the 4A 5G is supported through Nov 2023, and the 5 through Oct 2023. That's not bad.

Apple providing 7 years of official support, i think.

And yet they lost a class action related to software updates making the hardware unusable and face more.

https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/25/22248408/apple-class-acti...

https://www.smartphoneperformancesettlement.com/

Yes turns out dropping support entirely is less risky than bad updates tanking performances, because you’re not immediately and personally causing issues.

Those are real issues but that misses the point that iPhones have seven years of support which also decreases the TCO of the iPhone to around 62% less than the competition.

Technically they didn't lose it -- that's a settlement. This might sound like I'm being pedantic -- and I am -- but it's an important distinction! It means there was never some official legal determination that they did something wrong.

The specific thing they were sued over was "we slowed down your phone when the battery got old, because the alternative was it crashing, and we didn't tell you we were doing it". Not explaining it was bad, but they've since fixed that, and the underlying technical thing they did seems reasonable and, to the point of this discussion, actually prolonged the usable life of the phone.

Assuming you bought one on launch day, that's just-under 4 years of support. That only looks good by the awful standards of Android -- you can expect 50%+ more for Apple's phones, which you'd think Google could at least equal.

Supported means many different things. Ideally, I want to know if the device is going to last, or if it's going to end up bootlooping and being a big PITA like the Nexus 5X, before I buy it. That requires that it be on the market for a considerable amount of time. In this case, the 4a 5G is discontinued after less than a year in the market; it may continue to be sold, but likely not for very long.

Free repair if that happens is nice, but also not that helpful unless being out a phone for a week is fine, and losing your on device data is fine.

The Pixel 6/6 Pro are rumored to have a 5-year support lifetime (in exchange for costing a grand). If true, I'm getting one. The Pixel 2 XL has been a great phone, despite spending all of Android 10 with most of the sensors not working due to some widespread corruption issue that would have necessitated a hard reset.

Looks like external dimensions are different, so they’re mechanically incompatible. With iPhones, mechanical dimensions are so close together that cases are 1-2 generations backwards compatible.

Compared to the price of a phone, cases are fairly cheap. Is the ability to reuse a case important for other reasons?

I’d say reducing waste is important.

Mechanical dimensions being close together definitely is. It’s a PITA when phones grow but your 3D printed cases don’t.

The issue is that every new Google phone is available in less and less countries. 5a looks like a good option to replace my current 3a, but it is impossible to officially buy it here in Europe.

If you want a smartphone that lasts, consider Librem 5 or Pinephone. They support mainline Linux kernel and will receive security updates forever.

Specs like a 2013 smartphone, and an OS without any commercial app support to speak of. Can't read my work e-mail, can't access my bank...a computer without useful software is only a toy, and the same goes for a phone.

Answers (related to Librem 5):

https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Freque...

In theory I wanted a Pinephone. That's until I saw it run GloDroid. So choppy it's unusable.

My next phone will be a Fairphone with LineageOS[1]. At least they're trying[2].

[1] https://forum.fairphone.com/t/official-lineageos-18-1-for-fa...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/03/the-fairphone-2-hits...

I'm considering the Fairphone as well, but could someone give me a reasonable idea of what to expect with running de-googled vs googled? Unfortunately I still need access to Gmail and Drive from my phone on occasion. Is that still available when de-Googled?

I'd love to have a full Android VM running on a de-Googled phone where I could sandbox all of the Google stuff.

I've run Android Degoogled for many years. Gmail can be accessed via K-9 Mail or another mail client via IMAP. Google Drive can be accessed via a browser such as Kiwi or Firefox.

> In theory I wanted a Pinephone. That's until I saw it run GloDroid. So choppy it's unusable.

This is a pre-beta version of software. If you run light and well-developed software on Pinephone, it's perfectly smooth: https://sr.ht/~mil/Sxmo/

Why do you need to reliably order an older generation of phone?

Company fleet?

Seems like a niche requirement that Google aren't aiming or claiming to meet - these are consumer phones not components for building into a system.

Doesn't really help someone looking for a well-supported "baseline" (no extra garbage from the manufacturer) android phone for company fleets.

BTW Samsung s20 FE is a good device. What do you think?

What is the difference between Pixel 5, Pixel 5 5G and Pixel 5a? is “5a” better or worse than 5?

Pixel X = Flagship, most expensive with best hardware and most features

Pixel Xa = Cheaper version of Pixel X, often with one tier down processor, less RAM, and lacking some features like wireless charging

Pixel 4a 5G (marketed as a 4a with 5G support) is somewhat of a weird case where it's actually closer to what we'd expect from a Pixel 5a (which is likely why it was discontinued while the Pixel 4a was not)

I am entirely lost

4a is a cheaper version of 4, except 4a 5G, which is 5a? But 5a also exists?

I am really lost here

The 4a 5G and 5a are separate phones, but target roughly the same price point and feature set (basically the mid tier "phone with 5G" market). When the 4a 5G launched years ago the 5a didn't exist. Now that it does the 4a 5G is being discontinued.

Yeah, the naming scheme sucks, google should have just called them the 5a and 5b or something.

The 4a 5G was launched less than a year ago, fyi.

For comparison, at one point I had three Samsung J2s all with different chipsets...

Usually, the Pixel Xa is a newer, more budget-oriented version of the Pixel X. "5G" variants of phones seem to be totally different phones, not just a radio upgrade.

There is 4a 5G and 4 5g, but no 5 5g (because 5 already has 5g). Right?

… who makes those

Can load another os on the latest models?

Wow, that lasted less than a year. Well done. At some point maybe all their stuff will be vaporware you have to preorder and then 9 months later they can return 40% of your money and cancel the order.

I was just thinking, since Apple is supposedly going to make a car, wouldn’t it be interesting if Tesla decided to make a smartphone since Google gave up.

Pixel 5a was just released last week, and Pixel 6 will be out in a few weeks

You are right man.

Nothing can be said. Everyone is behind more and more wealth. EVs makers making robots wo we can consider your are saying right at some extent.

No SIM, Starlink-only? Would be interesting.

Starlink is not available in many parts of the world.

Might be tricky to package a beamforming V/Ku/Ka band antenna array into a cell phone.

The phones could only connect to towers that connect to Starlink.

Maybe it would be interesting but why on earth would they go for it?

It would be like them starting an F1 team, sure they probably have the engineering know-how but so does every team on the F1 grid.

It would be much more likely for Tesla to start a Formula E team, since F1 uses gas.

Formula E is pretty much a spec series compared to F1, if anything they'd enter an endurance series but think any entry would be unlikely.

Because Tesla is becoming a luxury tech brand, like Apple.

Almost no one buys Apple products for the tech anymore. It's all about aesthetics and brand identity. They might have had the best products at one point, but that's become secondary to their continued success.

Who wants to be the scrub with yet another iPhone when all the cool kids have the new Tesla phone that matches their S3XY electric car?

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