Reliable camera shots, okay fingerprint scanner and snappy performance out of the box Google’s Pixel line up has been slowly making some inroads in the Indian medium to premium range space for a while, and the Pixel 7a has been targeted to continue that effort – offering Google’s own take on the Android OS for the masses. Let’s see how well it performs with its price tag of Rs. 43,999.
Design: the phone features a very Pixel-esque look and feel, with a 6.1-inch 20:9 aspect ratio flat display, aluminium framing and the camera setup on a metal bar that we are so used seeing on Google’s Pixel devices. The left side houses the power button and volume buttons near the middle that require a decent amount of pressure and don’t feel cheap but aren’t the most premium buttons to use either. The left side is plain other than the SIM card tray. The top houses the secondary mic; while the bottom houses one set of loudspeakers, USB type C as well as the primary mic. The phone weighs about 193 grams and measures 9mm in thickness, that plus rounded edges and slightly curved back make it a comfortable device to carry around. The back is all glossy and does tend to catch fingerprints and smudges though a wipe every now and then should be sufficient to clean it.
Display: The phone features a 6.1-inch (1080x2400) AMOLED display with support for up to 90Hz refresh rates and HDR video output. I found the display requires to be set at a really high brightness when used outdoors in direct sunlight, but once done, it’s usable just fine. The colours and overall content appear better on the Pixel7a than the 6a in terms of contrast and calibration. It’s sharp and does an okay job of handling HDR content from streaming services. For viewing high resolution images and full HD videos, it does a good job with details and darker scenes in general.
Camera: The Pixel devices have been known for their camera performance for a few years now. The Pixel 7a comes with a dual camera setup – 64MP (f/1.89) main camera and a 13MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera. The camera performance is reliable to sum it in one word. More often than not, I found the initial few shots to be sufficient enough in terms of picture quality and details than I didn’t feel like taking more shots of a subject that I might want to save for some use. The shots usually come out sharp and well-stitched in terms of colour as well as white balance. There are a few useful modes to choose from, including Single Res Zoom that allows you to zoom in twice, but you kind of lose out on details, as you would expect. Night shots seemed a bit better in terms of dynamic range and noise handling plus slightly lower shutter lag, too, which is nice to see. In terms of vides, you can shoot 4K videos at 30FPS and 1080p videos at 60FPS, and the output came out decent enough that you can use it for any editing for a small screen use, certainly better than Pixel devices from two years back by any measure. The front houses a 13MP (f/2.2) camera that handles selfie shots in both daylight and somewhat in low-light conditions well enough without blowing out on details and skin tones too much that you can use them for your social media or personal use. It can struggle a little if used for when used with the subject close (not exactly macro) but that’s not a common use for the frontfacing camera.
Performance and software experience: Coming to another part for which Pixel devices often get mentioned in a related discussion; the device is equipped with Google’s Tensor G2 chipset (octa-core processor and Mali G710 GPU plus Titan M2 Security chip) along with 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB UFS3.1 storage. Ut runs on Android 13 with the May security patch installed. The phone’s general day-to-day performance is nothing to be worried about. It handles scrolling, switching between apps, watching high resolution videos, navigating among images without breaking a sweat. The 90Hz refresh rate also shines through when scrolling in the OS UI as well as playing games such as CoD: Mobile at high settings with almost no frames dropped or glitches to report. What is worth reporting, though, is the phone does tend to heat up a bit every now and then under different workloads. With hotspot on and charging, it gets heated up; when charging all in one go, it heats up; when downloading heavy files while watching a video in the foreground, it heats up. The phone didn’t get alarmingly hot but it still happened frequently enough and you could reproduce it with similar tasks. There are some nifty little features you get from a Pixel devices – one is the ability to copy-paste images right from the multi-apps view, or select and copy-paste text; another would be Magic Eraser by which you can remove some object in your photos as if it wasn’t there in the first place with Google’s machine learning stuff, and it works well a lot of times. You also get Pixel drops where Google adds something (such as new wallpapers) with an update around every three months.
Connectivity: This is where I found the Pixel 7a’s biggest downside – it struggles with 5G connectivity and it’s significantly worse than pretty much any other 5G device above 25,000 today. It not only falls to4G/LTE more frequently than other 5G devices in same locations and same network (which is still not the deal breaker), but also fails to have data or even make and receive calls while latching to 5G (which is a big deal). After contacting the pixel support team, the connectivity issue got a bit better for making and receiving calls when 5G is on, but the phone still struggled to latch on to 5G and kept falling to 4G/LTE almost every single time. WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS performance, though, is stop notch and I didn’t find any issues during my usage.
Battery experience: The phone is powered by a 4,385mAh battery unit and comes with only a USB type C to type C cable (no charger) in the box. It supports up to 18watt of charging speeds, and takes a little over 2 hours to charge from 1% to full, which is considerably more than what we have been seeing from the likes of Moto, OnePlus, Realme and Xiaomi for quite a while now. The phone lasts about 20-22 hours for moderate use, and around 18 hours on a busy day, which isn’t too great but just about decent.
Verdict: The Pixel 7a makes for an interesting device in the Indian market. For those who really want Google’s own take on Android in a not-so-large form factor and no third party apps pre-installed, the phone excels in the performance and software side of things. Plus, you get a really reliable camera experience with a nice AMOLED display. It has an okay battery life, but really lets down with its 5G connectivity issue, which hopefully gets further improved with some updates in the near future.
