Google’s Pixel 6a may not have formally hit the market yet, but that hasn’t stopped some reviewers from getting a device early, testing it out, and showing off a few ways Google’s cut-price phone doesn’t quite belong. to the Pixel. 6 families.
Malaysian tech YouTuber Fazli Halim managed to get his hands on a retail-ready device pixel 6a sample in early June and gave him the unpacking treatmentbut now it’s back with a full review, in which we see the 6a’s fingerprint sensor compared to the current leader of the line, the Google Pixel 6 Pro.
While both phones feature optical in-display fingerprint sensors, in Halim’s review, the Pixel 6a’s sensor proves to be consistently faster at reading and unlocking the phone, as well as more consistent, compared to the Pixel 6 Pro.
It’s surprising, given the lower specs (and thus cost) of the Pixel 6a, that performance is so much better, but early signs seem to suggest it.
Analysis: a lighter touch
Slow and lackluster fingerprint sensor performance was just one of many small quirks that plagued the pixel 6 and 6 Pro around its launch in late 2021, with Google only partially addressing some of the issues the phones faced through subsequent software updates.
With that in mind, it was encouraging to learn that the Pixel 6a would use a different fingerprint sensor than the 6 and 6 Pro, something Rich Osterloh, Google’s senior vice president of devices and services, said. confirmed during Google I/O 2022 when the Pixel 6a was first officially announced.
While Halim’s video gives us our first proper look at the Pixel 6a, consumers will have to wait until July 28 to officially buy the phone, which trades in several key hardware attributes found in the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro to achieve a lower selling price of $449 / £399 / AU$749, giving it the potential to compete as one of the best cheap phones out there.
Fingerprint is just one tweak offered by the Pixel 6a compared to its smaller size siblings. 6.1-inch 60Hz Full HD+ OLED displaya lower-resolution 12.2-megapixel main camera (compared to the 6 and 6 Pro’s 50-megapixel main unit, which makes them some of the best camera phones currently on the market) and a base memory and storage configuration of 6 GB and 128 GB, respectively.
Where the Pixel 6a holds its own is with the same Google-made Tensor SoC and, of course, that snappier fingerprint sensor, which, coupled with the lower price, might be the perfect match for some.
On the other hand, we have the pixel 7 around the corner after Google inexplicably showed it off at I/O earlier this year, and that’s likely to come with a new PIxel 7a model not long after, so the search giant hasn’t made it easy to decide when to pick up a new phone, it seems.
