WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.080 Just three days ago, I finally hit my breaking point with the iPhone and I went, 00:00:04.080 --> 00:00:07.760 look, I just need an Android that has a decent camera, clean software, 00:00:07.760 --> 00:00:15.520 and reasonable performance. I picked up the nothing phone 3a. If only I'd known that I was going to come in this morning and be greeted by the Pixel 9a, 00:00:15.520 --> 00:00:22.560 an option that nails all of those requirements and comes with seven years of security updates now. 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:27.600 Let's start with the pink one, shall we? Oh, sorry, excuse me, peony. 00:00:27.600 --> 00:00:35.280 Pivoine? Rose? Pivoin? The main highlights compared to the Pixel 8a are, of course, the slightly larger, brighter display, 00:00:35.280 --> 00:00:42.400 the higher capacity, faster charging battery, and the move from IP67 to IP68 water and dust 00:00:42.400 --> 00:00:48.000 resistance. Being a member of the Pixel 9 family, you also move to the Tensor G4 processor, 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:53.760 which should amount to improved performance, albeit not as much as the 9 and 9 Pro, 00:00:53.760 --> 00:00:58.880 given that it has only eight gigs of memory versus 12. But with all of that said, 00:00:58.880 --> 00:01:06.000 the thing that really stands out to me, even after dailying the nothing phone 3a for just a few days, 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:11.600 is the near complete lack of a camera bump. Not only does it stand out compared to monstrosities 00:01:11.600 --> 00:01:18.720 like this, but even compared to the Pixel 8a, the privilege of being able to put my phone down 00:01:18.720 --> 00:01:24.880 on a table and have it functionally not even move, no matter where I tap on it, 00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:31.520 that's really appealing. Man, this one's been hilarious. Like, I legitimately have trouble 00:01:31.520 --> 00:01:37.600 getting it into my pocket sometimes. Watch this, okay? Okay, well, the one time it works, 00:01:38.800 --> 00:01:42.960 maybe my technique has just gotten better. Whatever, the point is, it definitely gets 00:01:42.960 --> 00:01:47.760 stuck sometimes. In terms of accessories, Google has taken the, you'll get nothing and 00:01:47.760 --> 00:01:54.400 you'll like it approach. You get a sim removal tool and a USB 2 USB-C to C cable. What is this, 00:01:54.400 --> 00:01:58.960 three feet? Oh, okay, with packaging that disintegrates the second you touch it, 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:07.040 but is eco-friendly. So shout out that. Actually, it's all cardboard. Nice. Yep, 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:12.320 a three foot cable. It at least feels decent. The good news is you probably won't need that 00:02:12.320 --> 00:02:19.360 cable very often. Google claims an unprecedented 30 plus hours of battery life on the 9a with 00:02:19.360 --> 00:02:24.240 up to a hundred hours in their extreme battery saver mode. While we weren't able to reproduce 00:02:24.240 --> 00:02:30.240 those numbers exactly, what we did find was that in our standard battery life test, it beat the 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:38.160 Pixel 9 by about 20% and it beat the Pixel 8a by about 40%. So it's clear that Google has been 00:02:38.160 --> 00:02:43.520 hard at work on the efficiency of both their hardware and their software. Speaking of software, 00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:49.680 Google promises seven years of security updates for the 9a, which is a major value add for the 00:02:49.680 --> 00:02:54.400 tens of dollars more that you might pay compared to other mid-range Android devices. 00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:59.760 And there's a lot more to like. While they're not going to win any awards for design creativity, 00:03:00.320 --> 00:03:06.080 it's an awfully cute phone, especially in this pink color. On the right, you'll find a lock button 00:03:06.080 --> 00:03:11.200 as well as volume rocker, neither of which have any opposing buttons that you could accidentally 00:03:11.200 --> 00:03:16.320 mash while you're trying to press them. I consider that a plus. At the top, you've got a mic for 00:03:16.320 --> 00:03:22.480 noise canceling. At the bottom, we get a USB 3.2 port. Boy, did I ever miss that when I was dailying 00:03:22.480 --> 00:03:28.000 the iPhone 16 plus and I needed to ingest photos. Sim tray as well as a speaker girl. And finally, 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:33.920 at the back, we get a 48 megapixel wide camera as well as a 13 megapixel ultra wide camera to go 00:03:33.920 --> 00:03:40.800 with our camera flash. On the front, our selfie camera is also 13 megapixels capable of 4k 30 00:03:40.800 --> 00:03:46.560 video recording. And as always, you can expect the camera experience to be pixelicious. Or at 00:03:46.560 --> 00:03:50.800 least I hope you can. I haven't actually tried it yet. All right, let's try out this camera. I'm 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:55.440 really excited about this because if I could have a phone that had a decent enough camera, 00:03:55.440 --> 00:04:01.360 but no huge camera bump, I'd be very interested in that. Definitely some post processing going on 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:08.960 here, as you would expect from an AI enabled device. That is really not the best I've seen. 00:04:10.080 --> 00:04:15.040 And it's probably going to be better than the 3a pro, just my merit of not over sharpening the 00:04:15.040 --> 00:04:22.160 crap out of everything. But I got to give the pixel the edge. Look at that. You can still make out 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:27.520 the creases in the fabric here, whereas they're blown out on the 3a pro for nothing. That is a 00:04:27.520 --> 00:04:32.240 perfectly acceptable selfie camera. I mean, I wish the guy taking the picture didn't look like that, 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:36.720 but hold on a second. How's my ultra wide? I mean, that's the one that's only 13 megapixels, 00:04:36.720 --> 00:04:40.480 right? Like, are we going to have enough resolution here, boys? Coming back to AI for a minute, 00:04:40.480 --> 00:04:46.160 while the 9a is packed with Google's AI features, it has their Gemini Assistant, it has their Pixel 00:04:46.160 --> 00:04:51.520 Studio so you can create and edit memes and share them and stuff. It's got call assist, so you can 00:04:51.520 --> 00:04:56.640 apparently hear calls more clearly and it'll wait on hold for you because it only has eight gigs of 00:04:56.640 --> 00:05:04.960 RAM. It can't run the same large models as its bigger non-A brethren. So for one thing, Gemini 00:05:04.960 --> 00:05:10.560 is apparently like a smaller version that doesn't run in the background all the time, so some things 00:05:10.560 --> 00:05:14.960 might be a little bit less responsive. It also doesn't support pixel screenshots, which is kind 00:05:14.960 --> 00:05:19.920 of like Windows Recall, but for Android and it doesn't support their call notes feature. Honestly, 00:05:19.920 --> 00:05:25.280 though, am I the only one who heard all of that and went, that sounds great? Am I missing something 00:05:25.280 --> 00:05:31.200 here? I mean, it's not good that this is the first A series phone where they've dropped features 00:05:31.200 --> 00:05:36.320 compared to the regular non-A, but are those not the ones that we would have turned off anyway? 00:05:37.200 --> 00:05:43.440 Why don't we talk about the screen? Unlike the 8a, which was limited to 1400 nits HDR and about 00:05:43.440 --> 00:05:51.280 2000 nits peak brightness under sunny conditions, the 9a boasts 1800 nits peak brightness in HDR 00:05:51.280 --> 00:05:57.440 and 2700 nits, which by the way, in our testing, we were able to get pretty darn close to. 00:05:57.440 --> 00:06:03.120 Let's check out some HDR video, shall we? Wow, does that ever look good? Now these days, 00:06:03.120 --> 00:06:08.240 manufacturers have a tendency to fudge the numbers a little bit around peak brightness and HDR brightness. 00:06:08.240 --> 00:06:13.520 So we don't really bad an eye if things are a little bit off, but with that said, we sure are 00:06:13.520 --> 00:06:19.200 impressed when they nail it and Google nailed it here. We got within about 100 nits of their claims 00:06:19.200 --> 00:06:24.560 across the board. This thing looks outstanding to the point where the performance seems to be 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:31.200 basically on par with the regular Pixel 9. It even features a 60 to 120 Hertz variable refresh rate 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:37.040 for its OLED panel. I really like this thing so far. How are the speakers though? 00:06:38.880 --> 00:06:42.800 Something I always want to know. Typically Google has been pretty good at this, so... 00:06:43.200 --> 00:06:52.160 Wow, good stereo separation. Considering how small that earpiece speaker is, I'm really impressed 00:06:52.160 --> 00:06:59.840 by that. That is a great soundstage on a tiny little 6.3 inch phone. Well, not that the phone 00:06:59.840 --> 00:07:07.600 itself is exactly 6.3 inches. That is a bit of a bezel, you know? That's a trizel. But the speaker 00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:12.000 quality is actually really solid. Like, can I just take one of these after the video? 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.640 Does anyone know? I'm just going to take one and I'm going to try it for a bit. 00:07:15.920 --> 00:07:20.160 Well, not really. They belong to Linus Media Group Incorporated. I never checked out the video 00:07:20.160 --> 00:07:25.520 recording. That's something that traditionally has just been plain better on the iPhone, my God. 00:07:26.400 --> 00:07:30.400 I really hope that there's some processing that's going to happen after the fact to make this not 00:07:30.400 --> 00:07:39.360 terrible. Nope, it's awful. It is just, it's just awful. The chips are awful. They're the wrong shape 00:07:39.440 --> 00:07:46.800 and they're just awful. Yes, this is a more expensive phone. This is a 16 plus. Oh my God. 00:07:47.440 --> 00:07:53.600 Like, in a pinch, I could shoot an LTT video on this thing. In a pinch, I would just have pain 00:07:53.600 --> 00:08:00.400 from this thing, you know? Like, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow, ow. Yes, they are. 00:08:02.640 --> 00:08:06.880 Like this is horrible. I really hope that there's some processing that's going to happen. 00:08:06.880 --> 00:08:13.280 The mic is great though. That's nice. That's nice to see. Like, man, the amount of noise in this 00:08:13.280 --> 00:08:21.120 piece of crap by comparison. I mean, yeah, I bet the 9 is not any different. Man, I would go 9A 00:08:21.120 --> 00:08:27.760 just to not have this horrible camera bump. Okay, yeah, expect markedly better performance in 00:08:27.760 --> 00:08:32.000 low light situations on the regular 9 versus the 9A. I mean, it makes sense. Look how much 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:37.440 bigger that flip and lenses. Just, it's a thing you should know. I still think I would choose this 00:08:37.440 --> 00:08:42.560 because this is a pretty tough scenario. It's very dark in here. Ah, yes, instead of Wi-Fi 7, 00:08:42.560 --> 00:08:47.520 we're stuck with Wi-Fi 6E. Personally, I don't think that's a huge deal on a mobile device like 00:08:47.520 --> 00:08:52.240 this, but your mileage may vary. We also, you know, speaking of things that I'm just not going to get 00:08:52.240 --> 00:08:58.800 over, okay, like giant camera bumps, camera holes, there's a hole in your display, which has actually 00:08:59.200 --> 00:09:04.800 bothering me quite a bit on the iPhone 16 Plus while I was using it. Dude, I watch movies on my 00:09:04.800 --> 00:09:11.280 phone. Having a hole in my movie. Like, I want to watch the whole movie, not the hole in the movie. 00:09:11.280 --> 00:09:15.920 There's a few more housekeeping items. It supports Bluetooth 5.3. The front glass is Gorilla Glass 00:09:15.920 --> 00:09:22.560 3.0. The back is a composite material that is matte, apparently, and I can confirm it is indeed 00:09:22.560 --> 00:09:28.080 quite matte. Seems less slippery than the nothing 3a pro, which I'm only comparing this to because, 00:09:28.080 --> 00:09:31.280 well, it's in a similar price point, and I've been using it for the last few days. That was kind 00:09:31.280 --> 00:09:36.240 of convenient, wasn't it? Except that I spent hours switching over to it, and now I'm going to spend 00:09:36.240 --> 00:09:40.800 hours switching over to this. Or maybe not, because maybe the transfer wizard will work this time, 00:09:40.800 --> 00:09:44.880 and I'll just go for my iPhone, because I'm only, I have like three days worth of SMS messages that 00:09:44.880 --> 00:09:49.120 aren't synced. Uh, what else can I say about it? Oh, yes, it supports wireless charging, 00:09:49.120 --> 00:09:53.840 which the nothing phone does not. Yeah, let's go. Not that I care that much about that. I don't 00:09:53.840 --> 00:09:57.760 really use it. And on the subject of things I don't really care about, the gaming performance is 00:09:57.760 --> 00:10:02.080 fine. It's about on par with the regular Pixel 9. I never game on my phone, but if you do, 00:10:02.080 --> 00:10:08.400 then you will find this to be quite suitably adequate for adequate gaming. So it's 500 bucks 00:10:08.400 --> 00:10:13.040 for the 128 gig version, but you can also get it with 256, which you might need, because as 00:10:13.040 --> 00:10:19.760 usual with modern phones that are not even high end in this case, but whatever, you don't get 00:10:19.760 --> 00:10:24.480 expandable storage. It doesn't have a headphone jack. I mean, it detects if you're in a car crash, 00:10:24.480 --> 00:10:28.480 though. So I guess that's cool. Subscribe to ShortCircuit.