Google Pixel 4a is Coming to India With One Rear Camera, OLED Display and No 5G

Google Pixel 4a is finally here, and yes, it is coming to India. After the presence of the gesture-sensing Soli radar chip stopped the Google Pixel 4 from launching in India, the budget version of Google’s much-hyped Pixel phones will be launched in India in October, in partnership with Flipkart. The Pixel 4a sits squarely in the mid-range segment, with its USA price tag of $349 (~Rs 26,200) actually being $50 (~Rs 3,800) lesser than the previous budget Pixel phone, the Pixel 3a. The latter was launched in India in May 2019 at Rs 39,999, and it is widely expected that the Pixel 4a will cost lesser than that when it is introduced in India later this year.

In terms of what the Pixel 4a brings to the table, the smartphone features a 5.81-inch full HD+ OLED display, with a single punch-hole camera cutout at the top left, and 19.5:9 screen aspect ratio. The use of narrow bezels suggest that the Pixel 4a should be as compact as the Apple iPhone 11, which incidentally is among the most compact smartphones in the market today. The Pixel 4a will feature an updated version of the Google Assistant out of the box, which will offer voice to text for messaging, among other features. It will also come with the Recorder app, which will offer live transcription as well.

The Pixel 4a that will come to India will be the non-5G variant. It is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G chipset, along with 6GB LPDDR4x RAM and 128GB UFS 2.1 storage. It also has Live Caption support, as well as an Always-On display that will make use of the low power consumption of OLED displays to give the added feature without draining the battery.

In a world where three rear cameras is considered modest, Google has gone ahead and featured only one rear camera – a 12.2-megapixel sensor with an f/1.7, wide angle lens. It has optical stabilisation, and more importantly, comes with Google’s famous computational photography algorithm that give it features such as HDR+, dual exposure, Night Sight with astro photography, portrait mode and more. It also has dual pixel phase detection autofocus, all of which sounds pretty good on paper. It sounds promising in video performance as well – the Pixel 4a’s camera will be able to record 4K videos at 30fps, and 1080p full HD videos at up to 120fps. For selfies, the single punch-hole cutout hosts an 8-megapixel image sensor with f/2.0 lens.

Other features of the Pixel 4a variant that’s coming to India include dual-band Wi-Fi support, Bluetooth 5.1, a 3.5mm audio port, NFC, a rear-mounted physical fingerprint sensor (yet another curious choice from Google) and a USB-C 3.1 port. The entire setup is powered by a 3,140mAh battery, with 18W fast charging support and USB Power Delivery 2.0.

The Google Pixel 4a looks quite premium, and its cutting edge display design is a welcome addition as well. Going forward, it remains to be seen how Google prices the Pixel 4a in India, especially considering the competition on offer from the likes of OnePlus, Oppo, Vivo and Xiaomi. The Google Pixel 4a will be available in India in only one colour – Just Black.