Google Pixel 7A Review: Compact, Elegant, And Fluid

Google only started making headway with the Pixel line of smartphones in India when it launched the Pixel A series in 2019. Despite the Pixel smartphone brand existing since 2016, the first three editions failed to impress in terms of sales. In 2019, Google decided not to launch the flagship Pixel 4 in India due to a combination of commercial and technical reasons. In 2020, during the pandemic, the flagship Pixel 5 didn’t make it to India either, but the watered-down Pixel 4a did and became a best seller on Flipkart. In 2021, the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro represented a significant upgrade for Google as it revamped the cameras and released a phone with its own chipset—the Tensor—for the first time.

India did not receive the phone, but it did get the Pixel 6A, which was lauded by reviewers like myself for being a great value option. The success of the Pixel A series gave Google the confidence to launch the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro in India last year. These phones performed better than previous flagship Pixel offerings, and they debuted a new chipset, the Tensor G2, based on Samsung’s Exynos chip platform.

Now comes the Pixel 7A, featuring the same chipset, launching in India today for Rs 43,999 following Google I/O 2023. It will be sold on Flipkart and the Google Store, and I believe it is Google’s best phone yet. It may not only cannibalize its own Pixel 7, but it will also cause headaches for every brand operating in its price bracket, including even Apple. The Pixel 7A closely resembles the Pixel 7, with both having flat OLED screens in candy bar form and providing a 90 Hz refresh rate. The only difference is a subtle variation in screen size: the Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch display, while the Pixel 7A has a 6.1-inch panel. The bezels on the Pixel 7A are more prominent, and overall, the phone is shorter than the Pixel 7. The Pixel 7 is slightly slimmer at 8.7 mm compared to the Pixel 7A’s 9 mm frame.

The Pixel 7A is lighter, weighing 193.5 grams versus the Pixel 7’s 197 grams; however, the smaller phone feels heavier in the hand. Both are comfortable to use, thanks to their compact size relative to more modern phones like the iPhone 14 Pro Max and the Galaxy S23 Ultra. Apart from the screen size, the cover glass also takes a hit as it features the older but still effective Corning Gorilla Glass 3. The entire chassis is IP67 water and dust resistant—a first for a Pixel A series phone—although this certification is slightly inferior to the IP68 on the Pixel 7 line.

For most people, this difference will not be relevant. Overall, the build quality of the Pixel 7A is excellent, and it feels like a premium phone. Users will have no issues with the display aside from its size. At 6.1 inches, it is small by modern standards, but you probably already knew that before buying this phone. In fact, you likely bought this phone for this very reason. Apart from the standard S23, there aren’t many choices for users seeking this screen size, and the Pixel 7A is certainly the more affordable option. The display is sufficiently bright even in direct sunlight and smoothly renders vibrant colors for watching shows and playing games.

The dual speakers on the Pixel 7A are excellent for experiencing content. Typing on the phone is also a pleasure, even when coming from an iPhone 14 Pro Max, thanks to the supple haptic feedback on this phone, you really feel like you’re using a premium device, which often doesn’t even happen with expensive Android phones. The feeling of having an optimized experience stems from the fluidity of the Google UI based on Android 13. It will get an update to Android 14 later in the year and 5 years of software updates. It also helps that you get more or less the same processing hardware as the flagship Pixel phones. Yes, the same Tensor G2 chip, the Titan M2 security chip, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. Tensor G2 was never a chip that would lead benchmarks with its 5 nm architecture; however, the entire stack here is tuned to work in harmony with Google’s software, and it does!

You can have numerous apps open simultaneously, the UI feels fluid, and you can get most day-to-day tasks done without a hitch, even a bit of light gaming. However, this phone will not provide the best graphics for games, nor will it be the fastest to render a video that you’ve edited on VN. While doing so, it will become hot! Google needs to tune the phone a bit better so that it doesn’t heat up so quickly. Of course, the star of the Pixel 7A show is the dual camera system on the back. It features a primary 64-megapixel sensor with an F/1.9 aperture and an optically stabilized lens, which bins down photos to a 16-megapixel resolution. It has all the Google HDR goodness and turns out to be the best camera you can get on a phone for less than Rs. 50,000.

This new camera system also enables Google’s Super Resolution Zoom, which does lossless zoom up to 8x. It works pretty decently. As one can imagine, low-light performance and portrait photography on the Pixel are exemplary. The ultra-wide, which has a 13-megapixel resolution, is also quite decent and retains the same color palette as the main camera. It also helps that you get all of Google’s software wizardry in the Google Photos app, which further elevates this camera to a league no other camera enters in still photography. The selfie camera is also pretty decent.

The Achilles heel of this phone is video; it certainly is not as good as an iPhone SE 2 in that regard, but Google has made good strides in this area as well. It can shoot in 4K at 30 frames per second and even has a speech enhancement feature for video in case you vlog like yours truly, but there’s still some room for improvement here.

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Pixel 7A is its battery life. Its battery is actually bigger by a smidgeon (30 mAh) than the Pixel 7 at 4,385 mAh. It eclipses the similarly sized Galaxy S23 by quite a margin, as that has just a 3,900 mAh battery. This shows in day-to-day use, as in the 3–4 days I tested the phone, I ended up with more than 25 per cent left in the tank with hectic use, and the phone pulled 5G as well. This was with upwards of 6 hours of screen-on time. The phone also supports fast charging but not hyper-fast charging like the ones you see on phones by Xiaomi, OnePlus, Oppo, and Vivo. It’s also the first Pixel A series phone to get wireless charging, which is why it feels quite chunky for such a compact phone.

Perhaps the two features that I wish worked better are what enable the use of the phone in the first place. Its fingerprint scanner, like the Pixel 6A, is wonky. Perhaps it’s a symptom of coming from a higher-end phone like the S23 series that has nn ultrasonic scanner that might be the issue, but Google has proven this can be remedied with a software update, and it should. Then there is Face Unlock, which makes its debut on the Pixel A series. Even in indoor conditions with decent lighting, it just doesn’t trigger, which further exacerbates the issues with the in-display scanner.

At the end of the day, Google has built an excellent phone. To me, it is the best Pixel they have created yet. It is fast, simple, and very usable, perhaps now making it the compact phone king in India, if not across the world.

However, Google needs to fix its service issues in India. Many people who were initially drawn to Pixel phones are scarred from bad experiences and have opted for iPhones even though they love the cameras and software. In the case of the Pixel 7A, it is also a small phone, which may not be to everyone’s liking. But if you want a small phone, the Pixel 7A has everyone beat. Even if you don’t care about screen size, at Rs. 43,999, the Pixel 7A surpasses all others as long as you don’t intend to game on it.

Photography by: Sahil Mohan Gupta