The Google Pixel 6a: A Fantastic Phone with Some Drawbacks

The Google Pixel 6a is indeed a fantastic phone, offering a modern and fresh design with an in-display fingerprint reader, OLED display, multiple cameras, and the same chip as the latest flagship phones. The fact that it has a glass back without wireless charging might be a bummer for some users, but overall, this is a great value proposition at its price point of $449. It's worth considering for those not tied to the Apple ecosystem.

The Nature of the Game: Apple's Dominance

Apple has been working towards its goal of having users come to them for every computing need for 25 years. The company's evolution over the past two decades is evident in its products, from the iMac launched in 1998 to the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch. What sets Apple apart is its singular focus on creating an ecosystem that integrates seamlessly across all devices. This has led to users becoming locked into the Apple universe, making it challenging for other smartphone manufacturers to compete.

The Grip of Apple's Ecosystem

One can't help but feel a sense of irony when considering the Pixel 6a and Apple's dominance in the market. The phone is designed with many features that cater to those already invested in the Google ecosystem, such as seamless integration with Google services like Photos, Messages, and Maps. While it may not be as exciting as the latest iPhone releases, the Pixel 6a offers a compelling reason to stay within the Android fold.

Upgrading Phones: The Personal Experience

When asked about their phone upgrade cycle, one respondent shared their personal experience of having bad luck with phones, citing dropping their old phone into a river. Another mentioned that they don't like to upgrade often, feeling biased towards iPhones but acknowledging that it's not necessarily a reflection on the Android ecosystem. The fear of switching between ecosystems is also present, as someone mentioned feeling anxious about the prospect of re-uploading photos and messages from an older device.

The Budget Factor

One might argue that the budget factor plays a significant role in the choice between Apple and Google devices. With smartphones like the Pixel 6a available at lower price points than their flagship counterparts, it's easy to see why some users are hesitant to upgrade to more expensive options. However, when considering long-term value, it's essential to think about the benefits of each ecosystem.

The iPhone vs. Android: A Shallow-Level Perspective

When asked about the preference for iPhones over Android devices, one respondent mentioned that they don't feel a strong affinity towards either platform but acknowledged that they have always been drawn to the sleek design and user experience of Apple products. Another shared their experience with an Android phone, stating that they've never had any issues with it but couldn't see themselves switching back to an iPhone.

The Grip of Habit

A respondent shared their own experience of feeling like they'd be "so annoyed" if they were forced to switch from one device to another. This highlights the concept of being "tethered" to a particular platform, where users feel uncomfortable with the idea of leaving behind the familiar features and ecosystem.

A Simple yet Effective Solution

One aspect that sets Google devices apart is their ability to seamlessly integrate existing data when switching between phones. When asked about holding an old phone up to a new one, one respondent mentioned how this feature alone makes them more likely to hold onto an iPhone. This highlights the importance of simplicity and ease of use in smartphone design.

The Apple Experience: A 25-Year-Old Strategy

Apple's success can be attributed to its 25-year-old strategy of creating an ecosystem that integrates seamlessly across all devices. From the iMac launched in 1998 to the latest flagship phones, Apple has consistently worked towards this goal. While some users may not see the benefits of switching, others are trapped within the Apple universe and would need significant convincing to leave.

A Response from the Community

The final question posed to the respondent was whether they'd ever consider switching to an Android phone or if they're on an Android phone, would they switch to an iPhone. The response encouraged viewers to share their thoughts in the comments below, highlighting the importance of community engagement and discussion around smartphone choices.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enstop the presses hold the phone there's a new budget pixel phone whoa what happened in the last few days was well none of that the google pixel 6a seems like it pretty much came and went mine arrived while i was on vacation and i came back to find a whole lot of coverage that didn't really seem all that excited about it and that is a little weird to me because when you look at this phone and you look at that price tag it kind of seems like an unbeatable deal and yet nobody really seems to care about it so today i don't want to talk about the google pixel 6a i want to talk about why google can sit around and put out some really great phones and nobody seems to bat an eyelash but when apple puts out a phone that's mediocre at best everyone goes crazy for it why is that now i'm certainly not new to iphones but i'm also not new to pixel phones in fact google has sent me every phone they've made starting with the pixel 3 back in 2018 so i've got quite the collection and every time a new pixel phone comes out i'm always pleasantly surprised there's always fun stuff to like about these phones i mean the pixel 4 xl had great colors great cameras it had a 90 hertz display and it had that google gesture motion chip that was kind of gimmicky but cool then there was the pixel 5 which had a metal back but still had wireless charging there's always some fun stuff but they've all looked generally boring and especially the entry-level phones have always been a little bit basic feeling but then the pixel 6 pro came around and things started to change this is now a really attractive and very exciting looking phone although i have to say the 7 and 7 pro i think are actually a step backwards in terms of their looks but now we have the new pixel 6a their new budget device and while it has gone up in price it's also gone dramatically up in visual quality the materials here the design the look of this phone is way more premium than 450 dollars would imply but hey i guess that's not really surprising because mostly it shares the same internals and the same design with the pixel 6 and 6 pro which are very attractive devices i actually think the 6 pro looks better than the iphone 13 pro max and yet i got this phone for free and i didn't switch to it i instead gave apple my own money for an iphone why why do i do that i mean you take a look at the iphone se and my gosh this thing kinda sucks by comparison it's got a five-year-old design which is itself kind of almost an eight-year-old design it doesn't have an oled display it doesn't have good battery life it doesn't have very good or very many cameras and it doesn't have that great of a user experience you've got a very small 4.7 inch display massive bezels on top and bottom and it's 60 hertz lcd it's it's very very boring the only thing going for the iphone se is it's the cheapest way to get an iphone on 5g and it has the newest chip in it both of those are true of the pixel 6a granted google's tensor chip is nowhere near apple's a15 but it's adequate things are fast enough for a 450 phone the cameras are significantly better than the 5 year old 12 megapixel single shooter on the iphone se this is an objectively better phone and so it does make you wonder how did apple get such a lock on people basically since 2019 i have seen a lot more negative sentiment in the news and rumor cycle for the iphone than i had in years before even with exciting phones like the iphone 12 in 2020 there was a lot more doom and gloom than there was excitement at least from what i saw on twitter youtube comments and article comments but despite the fact that people seem to be quite bored with what apple is doing with the iphone these days they're still more than happy to be forking over cash every year or every other year to keep up with the trend but one of the main reasons why i think that's the case has nothing to do with hardware as much as apple loves to talk about you know the new colors or we made the cameras go diagonally or now there's got promotion on there they love to talk about it but that's not why people are actually buying them buying an iphone is a cascading cycle of upgrades because let's say you're starting fresh right you're a teenager all of your friends have iphones so of course that's what you're gonna want for christmas or your birthday so there you go you got your new iphone but now you might as well get airpods because everyone knows that airpods are the best wireless headphones for having an iphone so you got to get those next and then let's say you're on the track and field team so why not get an apple watch because it just goes with the iphone and the earbuds and then you're off to college well now you're going to have to get a macbook because you can use imessage on it while you're sitting in class and should be taking notes but who wants to do that so you gotta have imessage and then all of a sudden you're like oh my gosh i've got airdrop i can share things back and forth i've got handoff i can copy something on my phone and paste it on my mac and boom all of a sudden you have got yourself a full apple ecosystem and after you're done doing all of that you get that whole ecosystem well chances are your iphone battery is running a little low after two or three years so you might as well go buy the newest one a pixel phone doesn't even cross your mind it's not a factor at all and that's the case for me i mean as a tech reviewer i like to try to have wide experiences and know how to use a lot of devices but when it comes time to get a new phone that i'm gonna use every single day it's an iphone no question and that's not just true for us techies that's also true for normal everyday people in fact i wanted to get a perspective from a normal everyday person so i asked my girlfriend what she thought of the new pixel phone this is shea she's perfectly normal she doesn't care about tech news at all hey what are your thoughts on the new m2 macbook air thermal throttling no thoughts had empty so there you go the proof's in the pudding she doesn't give a crap about any of this stuff so this is the new google pixel 6a it's their entry-level phone and it's sort of designed to be a budget phone that looks and feels a little bit more like a high-end phone and so i guess the question is with a phone like this that's half the price of the iphone is there anything that it could do that would get you to switch and save 550 bucks i i couldn't see myself switching to this phone just because i have so many other things that work with my iphone like the airpods uh my macbook and my apple watch and like all of that combined is way way more than like the 400 savings there's so many features on like the iphone that i i do like like imessage and you would you would definitely feel like removed from your friends if you became a green bubble i would instantly be cut off and no they'd shut you out completely yeah i can tell that it's like a budget phone it's giving she in but okay it feels kind of plasticky it's glass it's still glass is it really i don't think it looks as nice but i want to say i am definitely very biased how often do you upgrade iphones i don't upgrade that much because i'm kind of i have bad luck with phones i dropped my old phone into a river oh yeah i know i don't think that androids are probably bad i just feel like i've been using my iphone for so long like i don't know on a shallow level i do like it better than the android phone like and how it looks and like i don't know like i if i think about it like if i lost this phone today like i wouldn't try to go look for an android phone like it would be so annoying i'd have to like get all my icloud photos and like um like put them onto that phone and then like none of my texts would like get back onto that phone too none of my notes like nothing from that phone would go on to that which is like a cool thing about like if you get a new iphone like you just hold the phone to the new phone and then like it's just everything's there like that's so nice i mean i guess that's probably intentional right if you can just hold your old phone up to your new phone and then everything just goes over exactly as it was that alone is probably going to get people to just upgrade instead of switching so to summarize your thoughts phone seems nice i don't hate it i don't like love it like it's not something i'm like i want this phone but it's not like disgusting i mean i probably wouldn't like buy it myself but if somebody else had it i'd be like okay i wouldn't text them but you wouldn't text them it doesn't really matter if this phone is good or not it's not really a factor that's the hold that apple has over us anyway back to the video so the google pixel 6a is it a fantastic phone yes it is does it have some drawbacks sure the bezels they look a little bit thick compared to other pixel devices you don't have wireless charging which is confusing because it has a glass back so that's definitely a bummer the screen is only 60 hertz and it definitely looks a little bit choppy and when you're looking at it in off axis environments it's well it's definitely a budget oled panel but at the end of the day it's a 450 dollar phone that looks super fresh and modern has an in-display fingerprint reader has an oled display has multiple cameras and the same chip as the latest flagship phones and 5g and usbc you can't go wrong this is a great phone and so if you are not tethered to the apple ecosystem i recommend it heck why not that's a great deal and i'm sure give it a couple of months you'll be able to find these things for like 400 or 379 and yet it's not nearly as exciting or going to be as popular as an iphone that's just the nature of the game apple has this whole market super cornered they've been working for 25 years to get this done yeah 25 years this was not an accident i mean you look back at what devices apple came out with starting in 1998 when steve jobs came back and launched the imac and you start to see a pretty clear trend 2001 the ipod that was the first real successful manifestation of the apple ecosystem because you had the best mp3 player and you had the best computer to tie it to and they had to co-exist because you couldn't just have an ipod and no computer and then you get to the iphone you couldn't even activate the iphone without a mac and then the ipad comes along and then the apple watch and you can really start to see that as apple evolved over the past 20 years it's been with that one singular goal of this user is going to come to us for every computing need and now well they got us we're trapped there's not much that other smartphone manufacturers can do to get me out of it but while you might not be able to escape apple's grasp what you certainly can do is leave a like on this video and subscribe so you don't miss more let me know what you think about this whole situation would you ever consider switching to an android phone or if you are on an android phone would you ever switch to an iphone let me know that stuff in the comments below and as usual i'll see you guys in the next one youstop the presses hold the phone there's a new budget pixel phone whoa what happened in the last few days was well none of that the google pixel 6a seems like it pretty much came and went mine arrived while i was on vacation and i came back to find a whole lot of coverage that didn't really seem all that excited about it and that is a little weird to me because when you look at this phone and you look at that price tag it kind of seems like an unbeatable deal and yet nobody really seems to care about it so today i don't want to talk about the google pixel 6a i want to talk about why google can sit around and put out some really great phones and nobody seems to bat an eyelash but when apple puts out a phone that's mediocre at best everyone goes crazy for it why is that now i'm certainly not new to iphones but i'm also not new to pixel phones in fact google has sent me every phone they've made starting with the pixel 3 back in 2018 so i've got quite the collection and every time a new pixel phone comes out i'm always pleasantly surprised there's always fun stuff to like about these phones i mean the pixel 4 xl had great colors great cameras it had a 90 hertz display and it had that google gesture motion chip that was kind of gimmicky but cool then there was the pixel 5 which had a metal back but still had wireless charging there's always some fun stuff but they've all looked generally boring and especially the entry-level phones have always been a little bit basic feeling but then the pixel 6 pro came around and things started to change this is now a really attractive and very exciting looking phone although i have to say the 7 and 7 pro i think are actually a step backwards in terms of their looks but now we have the new pixel 6a their new budget device and while it has gone up in price it's also gone dramatically up in visual quality the materials here the design the look of this phone is way more premium than 450 dollars would imply but hey i guess that's not really surprising because mostly it shares the same internals and the same design with the pixel 6 and 6 pro which are very attractive devices i actually think the 6 pro looks better than the iphone 13 pro max and yet i got this phone for free and i didn't switch to it i instead gave apple my own money for an iphone why why do i do that i mean you take a look at the iphone se and my gosh this thing kinda sucks by comparison it's got a five-year-old design which is itself kind of almost an eight-year-old design it doesn't have an oled display it doesn't have good battery life it doesn't have very good or very many cameras and it doesn't have that great of a user experience you've got a very small 4.7 inch display massive bezels on top and bottom and it's 60 hertz lcd it's it's very very boring the only thing going for the iphone se is it's the cheapest way to get an iphone on 5g and it has the newest chip in it both of those are true of the pixel 6a granted google's tensor chip is nowhere near apple's a15 but it's adequate things are fast enough for a 450 phone the cameras are significantly better than the 5 year old 12 megapixel single shooter on the iphone se this is an objectively better phone and so it does make you wonder how did apple get such a lock on people basically since 2019 i have seen a lot more negative sentiment in the news and rumor cycle for the iphone than i had in years before even with exciting phones like the iphone 12 in 2020 there was a lot more doom and gloom than there was excitement at least from what i saw on twitter youtube comments and article comments but despite the fact that people seem to be quite bored with what apple is doing with the iphone these days they're still more than happy to be forking over cash every year or every other year to keep up with the trend but one of the main reasons why i think that's the case has nothing to do with hardware as much as apple loves to talk about you know the new colors or we made the cameras go diagonally or now there's got promotion on there they love to talk about it but that's not why people are actually buying them buying an iphone is a cascading cycle of upgrades because let's say you're starting fresh right you're a teenager all of your friends have iphones so of course that's what you're gonna want for christmas or your birthday so there you go you got your new iphone but now you might as well get airpods because everyone knows that airpods are the best wireless headphones for having an iphone so you got to get those next and then let's say you're on the track and field team so why not get an apple watch because it just goes with the iphone and the earbuds and then you're off to college well now you're going to have to get a macbook because you can use imessage on it while you're sitting in class and should be taking notes but who wants to do that so you gotta have imessage and then all of a sudden you're like oh my gosh i've got airdrop i can share things back and forth i've got handoff i can copy something on my phone and paste it on my mac and boom all of a sudden you have got yourself a full apple ecosystem and after you're done doing all of that you get that whole ecosystem well chances are your iphone battery is running a little low after two or three years so you might as well go buy the newest one a pixel phone doesn't even cross your mind it's not a factor at all and that's the case for me i mean as a tech reviewer i like to try to have wide experiences and know how to use a lot of devices but when it comes time to get a new phone that i'm gonna use every single day it's an iphone no question and that's not just true for us techies that's also true for normal everyday people in fact i wanted to get a perspective from a normal everyday person so i asked my girlfriend what she thought of the new pixel phone this is shea she's perfectly normal she doesn't care about tech news at all hey what are your thoughts on the new m2 macbook air thermal throttling no thoughts had empty so there you go the proof's in the pudding she doesn't give a crap about any of this stuff so this is the new google pixel 6a it's their entry-level phone and it's sort of designed to be a budget phone that looks and feels a little bit more like a high-end phone and so i guess the question is with a phone like this that's half the price of the iphone is there anything that it could do that would get you to switch and save 550 bucks i i couldn't see myself switching to this phone just because i have so many other things that work with my iphone like the airpods uh my macbook and my apple watch and like all of that combined is way way more than like the 400 savings there's so many features on like the iphone that i i do like like imessage and you would you would definitely feel like removed from your friends if you became a green bubble i would instantly be cut off and no they'd shut you out completely yeah i can tell that it's like a budget phone it's giving she in but okay it feels kind of plasticky it's glass it's still glass is it really i don't think it looks as nice but i want to say i am definitely very biased how often do you upgrade iphones i don't upgrade that much because i'm kind of i have bad luck with phones i dropped my old phone into a river oh yeah i know i don't think that androids are probably bad i just feel like i've been using my iphone for so long like i don't know on a shallow level i do like it better than the android phone like and how it looks and like i don't know like i if i think about it like if i lost this phone today like i wouldn't try to go look for an android phone like it would be so annoying i'd have to like get all my icloud photos and like um like put them onto that phone and then like none of my texts would like get back onto that phone too none of my notes like nothing from that phone would go on to that which is like a cool thing about like if you get a new iphone like you just hold the phone to the new phone and then like it's just everything's there like that's so nice i mean i guess that's probably intentional right if you can just hold your old phone up to your new phone and then everything just goes over exactly as it was that alone is probably going to get people to just upgrade instead of switching so to summarize your thoughts phone seems nice i don't hate it i don't like love it like it's not something i'm like i want this phone but it's not like disgusting i mean i probably wouldn't like buy it myself but if somebody else had it i'd be like okay i wouldn't text them but you wouldn't text them it doesn't really matter if this phone is good or not it's not really a factor that's the hold that apple has over us anyway back to the video so the google pixel 6a is it a fantastic phone yes it is does it have some drawbacks sure the bezels they look a little bit thick compared to other pixel devices you don't have wireless charging which is confusing because it has a glass back so that's definitely a bummer the screen is only 60 hertz and it definitely looks a little bit choppy and when you're looking at it in off axis environments it's well it's definitely a budget oled panel but at the end of the day it's a 450 dollar phone that looks super fresh and modern has an in-display fingerprint reader has an oled display has multiple cameras and the same chip as the latest flagship phones and 5g and usbc you can't go wrong this is a great phone and so if you are not tethered to the apple ecosystem i recommend it heck why not that's a great deal and i'm sure give it a couple of months you'll be able to find these things for like 400 or 379 and yet it's not nearly as exciting or going to be as popular as an iphone that's just the nature of the game apple has this whole market super cornered they've been working for 25 years to get this done yeah 25 years this was not an accident i mean you look back at what devices apple came out with starting in 1998 when steve jobs came back and launched the imac and you start to see a pretty clear trend 2001 the ipod that was the first real successful manifestation of the apple ecosystem because you had the best mp3 player and you had the best computer to tie it to and they had to co-exist because you couldn't just have an ipod and no computer and then you get to the iphone you couldn't even activate the iphone without a mac and then the ipad comes along and then the apple watch and you can really start to see that as apple evolved over the past 20 years it's been with that one singular goal of this user is going to come to us for every computing need and now well they got us we're trapped there's not much that other smartphone manufacturers can do to get me out of it but while you might not be able to escape apple's grasp what you certainly can do is leave a like on this video and subscribe so you don't miss more let me know what you think about this whole situation would you ever consider switching to an android phone or if you are on an android phone would you ever switch to an iphone let me know that stuff in the comments below and as usual i'll see you guys in the next one you\n"