I have encountered the occasional bug here and there, and I have also noticed a few smaller issues I thought wouldn’t bother me, which actually did end up being quite annoying. Still, if you are looking for the tl;dr, here it is: I have not seen anything to the extent of the complaints I have heard about the Pixel 6 family and living with the Pixel 6a has mostly been smooth sailing. Some small phones these days are too small, but the Pixel strikes just the right balance
In order to determine whether I can still recommend the Pixel 6a after the initial honeymoon period, read on. It has been more than a month since I switched to the Pixel 6a as my main and only phone, so I feel that’s a good time to really get to know the phone a bit more than just the typical review. After a full month of use, everything I said in my original review about the Pixel 6a holding a wonderful balance between pricing, a potent chipset, and features still holds true, and the phone has been generally great for me.
Highlights
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I understand that phone makers can put all of the cameras and technologies in a larger phone, but even the 6.4-inch Pixel 6 felt way too big for me, and the Pixel 6 Pro with its 6.7-inch screen felt gigantic. A phone is something I usually carry in my pocket, and if it makes it uncomfortable for me to walk or sit down, well… sorry, but that’s a dealbreaker!
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Let me start with what I love about the Pixel 6a and why I readily switched to it the moment I put my hands on the phone. For me, that was a lot about the combination of compact size, fast performance, and reasonable price.
Not once have I felt sorry that the Pixel 6a is made of plastic. Quite the opposite, I am afraid of using a phone made of glass without a case, it feels too fragile, while with the Pixel, I was using it without a case and without worrying too much about it. The phone now has a few tiny scratches, but nothing major, so durability has been good too. It also helps that the phone is quite affordable, so even if I damaged it, I wouldn’t feel quite as terrible as when dropping a $1,000 phone.
On the other hand, I feel that some devices can be too small. I used the Asus Zenfone 9 just before the Pixel, and it’s just a tiny bit narrower but enough to feel too cramped for typing, while the Pixel 6a strikes just the right medium. I might be way too picky about this, but if you feel similarly, drop a comment below, I’d be glad to hear I’m not alone in this.
(Image credit – PhoneArena) The Pixel 6a camera does great both during the day and at night – Pixel 6a after 1 month of use: an iPhone killer or just another affordable Android phone?
(Image credit – PhoneArena) The Pixel 6a camera does great both during the day and at night. In this past month, I haven’t used the camera as much as I usually do, and I think that might be coincidence, but might also be about this phone missing some of my favorite camera features. I love to shoot portrait mode photos, but Pixel portraits look terrible at 2X digital zoom, and 1X portraits just don’t look good to my eye. To be perfectly honest, I am not a huge fan of Pixel colors in photos during the day, they lack a bit in warmth, but that is a personal preference.
I also film myself occasionally while working out and keeping a vlog of the workouts. When you film yourself, you often have to trim the beginning and the end of the video where you set up the camera, and the Pixel is quite slow at that. Trimming a 40 second 4K video down to a story-friendly 15 seconds can take a very long while. Compare this to an iPhone where that barely takes a moment, and it’s a massive difference.
But let’s be realistic, this is a mid-range phone and compared to the competition, the likes of the Galaxy A53 and the iPhone SE, I feel it’s a step above both of those. The iPhone SE might record slightly better video, but the Pixel absolutely shines in low light photography and has an ultra-wide camera. And compared to the Galaxy A53, I feel the Pixel just beats it squarely in all scenarios, daytime photos have way better dynamic range, night photos are vastly better, and 4K video on the Pixel has proper stabilization, while the Galaxy does not have that. From the news www.phonearena.com