The phone is so good that Google is rumoured to discontinue the A series to prevent it from overriding the main series.
Sundar Pichai has just presented this year’s Google I/O. Unlike Apple’s WWDC, it is more US-centric, so Filipinos won’t experience whatever Google has shown in its event. Writing about the Pixel series may not be too relevant for Filipinos but our stats show that it’s not just them reading our blogs, so the show must go on.
Anyway, one of the most anticipated topics to be discussed is the Pixel 7A. It is also rumoured that this is the last A series phone since it differentiates so little from the vanilla Pixel series anyway. This is seen with the 7A, it’s nearly similar to the Pixel 7 but with fewer bells and whistles as well as a much more affordable price.
Starting off with the display, the phone finally has a high refresh rate of 90Hz. Something which was lacking in the 6A but really should be included. Fans were screaming for it too. The display is OLED and measures 6.1″ (no change here from the 6A). It is protected with an ageing Corning Gorilla Glass 3 and has a 2400x1080px resolution. By the way, it is also IP67-rated so it could give Samsung’s own Galaxy A series a challenge.
According to Google, the phone is mostly made of recyclable materials. The camera visor/hump is, for example, made of pure recycled aluminium.
It uses a second-generation Tensor chipset called the Tensor G2 which was made in-house by Google with fabrication done by Samsung. The phone is paired up with 8GB LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB UFS 3.1 storage although there will be higher storage options available. Additionally, you could purchase more cloud storage on Google Drive to store your files on the selected account.
As the Tensor chipset is made for security, it is also built with a custom-made Titan security chip and offers up to 5 years of security updates.
Cameras are what Pixels excel at. For about 4 years, the phones themselves managed to compete with other flagships while only using one camera, so imagine two or three. Here, the camera sensor is 72% larger than the 6A. Combined with Google’s computational photography tech, this makes for a very bright and sharp image. This has a resolution of 64MP and now has 8x digital lossless zoom. While having more megapixels, the sensor used is still smaller than the Pixel 7 so it will produce worse results than the vanilla phone. Nonetheless, it has OIS and could take pictures competitively.
There’s also the 13MP Ultrawide camera with Dual-Pixel autofocus which creates several images and the phone decides which photo process looks best to provide results. Unlike Xiaomi’s top-tier flagship 13 Ultra, the Pixel 7A can create 4K videos at the back AND front! Beat that, flagships.
It has a 4385mAh battery with 20W fast charging and 18W fast wireless charging which is a first (and probably last) for the A series. Google isn’t shipping chargers for this one and what you get is a USB-C to USB-C connector.
The phone has 5G services (sub-6GHz, mmWave) with a slot for two SIM cards, one for a physical sim and the other for E-SIM. No, don’t ask for expandable storage, there is none.
It is available in India first for INR 44,000 (~PHP 29.9K) which is honestly very competitive against the likes of the Galaxy S23 and iPhone 14.
About those colours? Sadly, the Filipino names aren’t real and the phone is not going to be available here. Not anytime soon. With Lazada delisting imported products, it’s a little harder to get one via the grey market. The colours are Coral, Charcoal, Sea, and Snow. Coral is exclusive to the Google store
SPECS:
- 6.1″ FHD+ (2400x1080px) OLED, 90Hz refresh rate
- Corning Gorilla Glass 3 Protection
- IP67 rating
- Google Tensor G2 (5nm)
- Coral, Snow, Charcoal, and Sea.
- 4385mAh, 20W fast charging
- 18W fast wireless charging
- USB-C, Stereo Speakers, in-display fingerprint scanner
- 5G services, 4G LTE, Wi-Fi 6/6e, Bluetooth 5.2
- Snow, Charcoal, Sea, Coral
- PRICE:
- 8/128: INR 44,000 (~PHP 29.9K)
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