I’m a bit of a user rarity About mobile phones. I edit videos for social networks for professional purposes, blocks of photographs in .DNG format, I like to watch series on my own phone, I play more retro emulators than my own console… In short, a heavy user Mobile at its best.
This means that, historically, Gamma Media It’s been something I’ve been systematically avoiding. I’m against the idea of a less powerful processor, slower memory and a phone that starts dragging after two or three years due to lack of resources.
Looking at the market there was little or nothing that convinced me beyond the maximum range. Until I tried the Pixel 8a.
Seven year update. More years of updated mobile than high-end. It’s not just about phones made by Google: it owes everything to its processor Low-mid-range chips may not stand the test of time well, and manufacturers may not commit to updates for many years.
No one guarantees that this Pixel, which doesn’t have the fastest memory on the market, will be good in 6 or 7 years However, the company is already telling us that it will pay special attention to their support.
The power to give peace of mind, I no longer need. I don’t need a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. But I know very well that I can’t live with a Snapdragon 7 Gen 3, at least for the phone I’m giving away. The processor is the heart of the mobile and, in the first months, everything usually works perfectly.
As the months and years go by, as updates and system weight and components wear down, that extra power is appreciated. Absolutely nobody needs, objectively, a 180hp car. When you have one and want to overtake up a hill, you thank yourself for the purchase.
Knits are starting to become mainstream. I’m tired of the promise of unreasonable peaks in nits that are only achieved on the smallest part of the screen. In fact, this week we saw the launch of some terminals with a peak of 4,000 nits and an HBM (maximum panel brightness with 100% pixels) of only 1,000 nits.
The Pixel 8a promises 2,000 nits at 5% of the panel, but actual peak brightness is 1,600 nits, which is practically double the brightness of its rivals in the mid-high range. You might not know how bad mid-range devices usually look in strong sunlight, but when you test this phone against the rest (it shines just like the Pixel 8), everything before and after
The camera does not require much hardware. Another thing that surprised me about the Pixel 8a is that it’s proof that you don’t need an infinite number of megapixels or multiple cameras to achieve an ambitious goal. With a simple sensor and an ultra wide angle it delivers better results than most of its direct rivals.
It’s all due to software: Google’s way of processing images. It’s not the most realistic, but it’s the one that gets the most attention for it’s high range look at. In a 1,000 euro mobile phone I’m quite demanding with reality, but in the medium range I want the photography (above all) to be consistent and balanced. It’s one of the few devices that achieves this.
Picture | BDtechsupport
In BDtechsupport | This is the Google Pixel I’d buy right now: it offers excellent performance and a compact size at a ridiculous price.