Pixel 4a First Impressions

Up until now, all of my smartphones have been Samsungs, starting with the original Samsung Galaxy and moving on up to the Galaxy S8. I decided that it was time to upgrade because the S8 is more than three years old, which means that it's no longer receiving timely updates and will be stuck on Android 9. 

Over the last few years, phones have gotten more expensive and being retired, I can no longer afford the top-of-the-line flagship phones. Fortunately, mid-range phones are available that are perfectly adequate and have the features I need. I narrowed my choices down to the Samsung A71 and the Google Pixel 4a. The deciding factor was the timely updates for the Pixel; as I type this, my phone is downloading Android 11, which likely won't be available until at least the end of the year for Samsung phones. The other main factors were size; the A71 is just a bit too big for me to hold comfortably, and the Google camera is better. 

Overall, after getting the basic setup done, I'm happy with my choice. The setup itself was straightforward as I had already moved most of my applications from Samsung to Google some time ago. The Pixel came with a small adapter that allowed me to connect the old and new phones to transfer my apps, photos, music, and other data. The only time-consuming part was recreating my home screen layout, which is a manual process. 

Despite having a slower processor, the Pixel seems adequately fast, certainly comparable to the S8. I set up the fingerprint scanner, which I never used on the Samsung, and it has been almost 100 percent reliable. Battery life seems to be good, although I won't be able to tell for sure until I finish getting the phone set up. 

The Pixel camera is very good, especially in low light, even without the Night Mode feature. With that, it's far superior to the camera on the S8, although from what I've seen online, it may not be a lot better than the newest Samsung phones. The lens appears to have a slightly wider angle than the lens on the S8, but it's hard to compare directly as I had the S8 camera set to a 16:9 aspect ratio, and the camera on the Pixel defaults to 3:2. (So far, I haven't found a way to change that). Pictures seem to have slightly lower contrast than those on the Samsung, but with a wider dynamic range, which is particularly noticeable in the sky in outdoor shots. (Then again, we're under high haze from the West Coast forest fires, so the sunlight is substantially dimmer than it would be normally). 

It will take me a while to get used to the differences between Android 11 and Samsung's OneUI. Samsung offers more options for customization and is generally a bit easier to use. There are some subtle differences in basic functionality. For example, when setting the font size, Google gives you three choices and Samsung five. Samsung also offers more choices for fonts. I'll get used to it eventually.

That's enough for now. I'll probably post more about specific features after I get more used to the phone.