Pixel 4a thoughts?

[FrgMstr]

I am still using my 4A and love it. I was resistant against the gestures at first, but made myself learn it over a couple of days, and now that I am used to it, I hate going back and using a phone with the 3-button navigation.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Got my 4a yesterday and in the time I've spent messing around with it I'm very impressed. The Screen to body ratio is immensely better than my Pixel 2, I keep trying to move my finger up farther than it needs to go because I'm so used to that giant lip on the bottom. Performance, overall, seems smoother than my Pixel 2. I don't know if this is because my Pixel 2's hardware was starting to fault (definitely overheating and such due to battery expansion) or just because its a fresh android install, but overall i'm more impressed with the 4a than I thought I would be. I was thinking this was gonna be a sidegrade, but its definitely a full on upgrade thus far. Probably will become moreso once Android 12 comes out.

I get that the 4a, in theory, has a weaker GPU, but I don't game much on my phone aside from Pokemon Go and that's running *much* smoother on the 4a.

Oh yeah, and battery life is like 4x better than my Pixel 2, but that thing's battery was old and probably nowhere near max capacity anymore.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Android 12 is installing. I'm hoping it fixes a few of my minor problems with Android 11 but we'll see how this goes.

I have a background that changes once a day, so i'm really curious how the adaptive color thing is gonna deal with that.

 

[techie81]

Android 12 is installing. I'm hoping it fixes a few of my minor problems with Android 11 but we'll see how this goes.

I have the 4A and have been on it for a week or so. So far, I haven't had any issues. Performance seems to have also improved slightly. Battery life is unaffected, although there have been some incremental decreases in performance from when I bought it.

 

[Vengance_01]

Android 12 is installing. I'm hoping it fixes a few of my minor problems with Android 11 but we'll see how this goes.

Please LMK how it goes. I am holding off on my parents 4a's

 

[TheSlySyl]

Well that's not a good start.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Thoughts after an hour.
My smart home stuff is WAY easier to access and quicker, that's great as my house is getting increasingly smart.
The bigger size on the quick access bar is... whatever. I don't use them all that often aside from auto-rotate and flashlight so those being easy to access is nice. I've literally used G-Pay twice in my life so having that within easy access does nothing for me.

THEY FIXED THE MUSIC NOTIFICATIONS! I use three different audio programs for different reasons and with android 11 they would just never. go. away. I don't need a fucking audiobook notification for an audiobook that I finished! Now it only shows the currently playing one and when I close it, it goes away, this makes me extremely happy! It was a minor frustration but an absolutely constant one for me.

They did not fix the frustrating double confirmation for my Pokemon Go Plus, was really hoping that would have changed.

Maybe its because my background happens to be dark today, but the adaptive icons beta looked absolutely terrible with no contrast against my background and i turned that off immediately. I'm curious what it'll look like tomorrow.

 

[EJR357]

I just received an excellent used 4a (off Swappa) to play around with. I am coming off an OG Pixel. So far so good; it's the same size but generally seems to perform same or better. My sensors were going bad in the OG; where brightness adjustment and auto-rotate were not working, plus apps were wonky at times. My biggest complaints are the stupid lockscreen digital clock display (too big + weird configuration...???) and having the google search bar/assistant permanently at the bottom of home screen. Also will take getting used to the date time showing up by the notch and no notification light (again...weird...???). I may switch back and forth for a bit, and possibly try Lineage or Graphene on the OG, then I can think about sideloading something on the new phone.

 

[Vengance_01]

I just received an excellent used 4a (off Swappa) to play around with. I am coming off an OG Pixel. So far so good; it's the same size but generally seems to perform same or better. My sensors were going bad in the OG; where brightness adjustment and auto-rotate were not working, plus apps were wonky at times. My biggest complaints are the stupid lockscreen digital camera display (too big + weird configuration...???) and having the google search bar/assistant permanently at the bottom of home screen. Also will take getting used to the date time showing up by the notch and no notification light (again...weird...???). I may switch back and forth for a bit, and possibly try Lineage or Graphene on the OG, then I can think about sideloading something on the new phone.

What did you pay by Chance?

 

[EJR357]

Vengance_01

$254 with tax. I got some cases (Spigen Tough & Caseology Vault) and extra screen protectors with it. That is actually a bit on the low side of average right now with these devices, so a good time to unload your old phones and pretty well make all or most of the purchase price back. I thought prices would drop more with everyone upgrading to the Pixel 6. I should have bought one from Best Buy before they let new supply run dry (299.99).

 

[TheSlySyl]

Anyone see any noticeable differences from the December Security update that's supposed to "fix and change 100+ things?" It took ages to install but the only thing i'm really noticing is that the ambient "what's playing" service seems to be faster.

Oh yeah, I had to turn off the "highlight color = background color" thing ages ago, apparently it wasn't made with the idea that someone might actually change their background on a regular basis. (I have mine set to change once a day, at midnight) and it kept causing all sorts of issues. Basically force quitting all apps I had open at midnight, breaking all of my widgets, etc.

 

[TheSlySyl]

So, the new Android security update/feature update is happening for pixels.

It does a lot of things, but one of the things it does is make this weird little "shrinking" animation followed by a wiggle of the icon whenever you back out of an app.

It bugs me.
It bugs me so much.

For the full update notes, which sound pretty nice.
https://support.google.com/pixelphone/thread/153884074/google-pixel-update-march-2022?hl=en

Otherwise, phone's still doing great at pretty much everything. Had a weird thing the past few weeks of the keyboard suddenly disappearing on me every now and then, but that seems to have fixed itself.

Also one of the newer updates fixed the highlight color background bug I mentioned in the previous post. Keep going strong little midrange phone!

 

[EJR357]

Glad you are enjoying the 4a, TheSlySyl

My phone has been rock solid since i bought it in December. I never went back to the OG Pixel.

So are they changing the app shrinking animation with this new update (I did not read the notes)? Right now when I back out of the app it shrinks down and then does the wobble (zooms back out a bit then shrinks). That doesn't bother me. It just shrinks and I flick it away if I'm done.

I guess I'm going to find out what this update has in store for the phone...it's downloading now.

 

[kirbyrj]

The 4a was still one of my favorite phones. I ended up switching to the 5 which is almost identical in size just has a little faster processor and 5G (neither one is very noticeable) when my wife moved to the 5a for a bigger battery.

Here's hoping the 6a is only slightly larger than the 4a/5 as that's a real sweet spot in my mind for phone size.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Does anyone still using a 4a want some Spigen glass screen protectors? Thanks to Amazon's fuzzy search logic I accidentally bought two two-packs for mine and my better halfs 5a 5g's, and I didn't notice until after the return window closed...

First come first serve. PM me and be willing to pay postage (I'm thinking basic padded envelope via USPS will do it) and I'll send them, or pick up locally in greater Boston. I'd rather they get used, than collect dust here and get thrown out in a few years.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Just updated to Android 13, update went smoothly, took a while, but that's likely because I have so many apps installed. So far I've seen no hiccups or even particularly noticeable changes. Things seem to be running a little smoother, but I don't know if that's the update or placebo. I'll post again if anything changes or seems worth mentioning.

 

[TheSlySyl]

Alright, its been less than two days but a few extremely noticeable upgrades:
* The new media player on the lockscreen is WAY, WAY better. It's easier to read, easier to interact with, and functions with chromecast flawlessly.
* The color picker for the background color that changes all the buttons and such is also improved.
* Most importantly, not sure if this is based off of new ram management or what, but bigger, more intense apps to load - such as Pokemon Go - are loading way, way faster. I'm talking about 1/3 the time if not faster than that, used to take a good 30-45 seconds to load and now its sub 10 seconds. It's really awesome.
* Noticing some smoothness upgrades to all of my google home IOT stuff in general, but i'm not really sure how to explain that except that it's "working better." Being able to adjust volume on multiple devices on a single screen is a really nice touch.