Over the past few weeks, rumors about Google’s next mid-range phone—the Pixel 4a—have been slowly trickling out. Now, a new leak has pegged the price of the Pixel 4a at $400, which means it’s a good time to rundown everything we know about the phone so far.
The latest info about the Pixel 4a’s price comes from what looks like a Photoshopped image posted by noted leaker Evan Blass (@evleaks). Priced at $400, the Pixel 4a would cost the same as last year’s Pixel 3a, so it appears Google is sticking with a similar strategy for this year’s midrange handset. And frankly, that’s a good thing, because despite having slightly slower performance, the Pixel 3a captured nearly all of the standard Pixel 3's best features, including great battery life, a simple but solid design, and flagship-phone-level camera quality.
In terms of specs, previous info from XDA Developers suggests that the Pixel 4a will sport a Qualcomm Snapdragon 730 chip (which if true, would rule out support for 5G), a 5.7 or 5.8-inch display, a USB-C port, and a headphone jack, the latter being something you don’t get on Google’s more premium phones.
More recently, YouTube channel TecnoLike Plus even posted a purported hands-on with an early Pixel 4a, which shed even more light on the phone’s features. According to TecnoLike Plus, the Pixel 4a will be available in two models, with the less expensive version offering 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage, while a slightly more expensive model will get 6GB of RAM, the same 64GB of storage, and possibly a dual SIM card slot.
TecnoLike Plus’ video also shows the Pixel 4A sporting a punch-hole selfie cam in the top left corner of its display, so it seems the 4a won’t support the standard Pixel 4's Motion Sense gestures, which requires a special set of sensors and radars to track hand gestures. Around back, it appears the Pixel 4a will come with a rear-mounted fingerprint sensor and a square shaped camera module with just a single lens, so no telephoto lens like you get on a Pixel 4 either.
At this point, it seems the only major thing about the Pixel 4a we don’t know is when it will be available. Last year, the Pixel 3a launched at Google I/O in early May, and while the coronavirus has prompted Google to cancel in-person attendance for Google I/O this year in favor of a livestreamed presentation, there’s no reason Google couldn’t have a similar late-spring launch planned for the Pixel 4a.
All told, the Pixel 4a is shaping up to be a solid follow-up to one of the best smartphone values from 2019. Now we’ll just have to wait for it to officially get announced.