Why I Bought the Pixel 3A
My current phone is a Google Pixel 1st Gen, the second one I’ve owned since the debut. Why? Because I like a quality experience at a quality price.
My Pixel, having been out for several years now, is quite outdated in terms of hardware; which also translates to an accordingly lagging experience with the OS and software. Moreover, since it’s a 32GB storage phone, I’ve been consistently getting “Running out of space” alerts, despite proactively backing up everything to Google Drive.
I was casually strolling and scrolling around on SlickDeals, one of my daily rituals to snag good deals, and came across the perfect phone for the perfect price. Specifically, this was the Pixel 3a. My reasoning for getting this device was two-fold:
The Bargain
The deal was, for $349, a brand new Quite Black Pixel 3a 64GB handset could be had, along with a $100 Amazon Gift Card. So in actuality, this brand new phone would cost just $249, all while it’s currently retailing for $399 MSRP. A flashy Pixel 4 device would be $699, in contrast. This offer was an absolute steal, so I had to jump on it.
The Quality
Touching back on the why. The Pixel 3a is a relatively new phone, less than a year old. This is subjective, as most users would consider anything over 6 months past launch date, “old”. I don’t care about any of that stuff. The Pixel has an amazing camera, and beautiful color interpretation. It’s great for social media. I’m a fancy car fanatic, but when it comes to a daily-driver cellphone, all I want is a reliable, fast, durable cell-phone. I’m happy with my Pixel 1 but I wanted something more powerful and up to date but not necessarily latest-and-greatest flashy.
I’m going to be unbiased here and say I’ve definitely owned Apple iPhones in the past. Their quality and reliability (for the first 2 years) is second to none. Unfortunately, iPhones never allowed the ability to customize apps, colors, fonts etc or incorporate widgets to the extent that Android devices did. Additionally, having that “developer” mind-set, building apps out of the blue for iOS was unlikely, as their barrier to entry is much higher given the high cost required to publish apps. I’ve also tried Samsung Galaxy phones in the past, which obviously run on android, and they weren’t nearly as fast, consistent and reliable as the iPhones. This is why many people including myself had a negative connotation towards ALL android-based devices. However, the Google Pixel changed that. It had the quality of an iOS device, with the open capabilities of an Android device.
The Undelete
The downside of technology is sometimes manufactures will go out of their way to do something absolutely unnecessary for the sake of technology. Electronic Parking Brakes, WTF? We’re unfortunately seeing a similar trend with smartphones, or maybe I’m just becoming old-school. I work in tech, so I have no choice but to embrace change and it’s just part of my career now to adapt to changes. But once you replace a fingerprint sensor with a facial recognition unlock feature, and delete the aux port, you’re really testing my loyalty. Yes, I’m talking to you, Mr. Pixel 4. A fingerprint unlock and an aux port are must-haves for me. Like I said, I like the Pixel 1, and I wanted something better, but don’t take away the staples because everyone else is doing it. So what should one do, if they want the latest Pixel, but with the “un-delete”, because they don’t want to be in the gym with an aux dongle or wireless earphones? They purchase the Pixel 3a of course!
Overall Synopsis:
$250 Phone? Check
64GB Storage? Check
Aux Port? Check
Fingerprint Access? Check
Badass? YOU BET!