My Hot Take on the Pixel 10a

[00:02] could it be one of the best mid-range phones of 2026, but it could very well phones of 2026, but it could very well be the best phone to buy in 2026. Allow me to explain. So, this phone has a lot that I really like about it. And I'm not

[00:14] saying it's better than the S25 Ultra. I'm saying this could potentially be a better buy for a lot of people. There's many people who don't need to spend $1,200 on a phone to get the best experience that they would personally

[00:27] use. And a $500 phone that checks all the right boxes could easily be an even be a better purchase because this has some other advantages that a lot of flagships don't have. For example, last year we had the very slim Pixel 9A where

[00:43] the camera bump was almost non-existent. This year, it is literally non-existent. There is no camera bump, it's completely flush, and it makes it a very pleasant and minimal experience when using this phone. It's way more pocketable, and you

[00:55] phone wobbling when you set it down. It's not going to get hung up on your pocket. And I know a lot of people use a case anyway, but I don't know. I think is not extruding from the back of your phone. That's a big benefit on the Pixel

[01:10] 10A. Another update this year is that you now have satellite SOS. In the past, pushed me towards originally iPhones when they had it. And then, you know, pushed me towards the flagship phones because I'm somebody who goes off-grid

[01:26] fairly often, whether you're hiking, you know, backpacking, doing stuff like that. And if you get hurt, satellite SOS could very well save your life. So, maybe it's like a little bit of like a fear in the back of my mind, and that's

[01:38] why I do that. But I think it's really nice to see that really big flagship feature rolling down to a $500 phone like the Pixel 10A. And to use this, you of aim it at the sky, and it lines up with some satellites, and you're able to

[01:53] send messages and get help like that. As far as what's under the hood of the Pixel 10a, we have the same Tensor G4 processor as the flagship Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. And although the Tensor is

[02:06] category, it can stutter, it's far from the Snapdragon series, but in the midrange category, it's a solid chip. It definitely gets the job done. And still one little complaint is that you should notice this is not a new chip from the

[02:21] Pixel 9a. The Pixel 9a and 10a both have the same Tensor G4, while the flagship Pixel 10 and 10 Pro are both using the Tensor G5. So, how much of a difference is it really going to be? Honestly, probably not that much different. The

[02:35] Tensor chips are always just one notch away from the Snapdragon flagships, but they're pretty good at a lot of the AI tasks that Google really focuses on with like plural, there's four different colors. So, you've got two that are

[02:50] pretty subtle, pretty neutral, and two that are much more vibrant. You've got kind of like a white and and kind of a blackish colorway. And then you've got berry and lavender, much more vibrant. Honestly, kind of fun colors. And you of

[03:02] change it entirely. You have aluminum rails on the outside, much like the Pixel 9a, and you have a composite back on the well, the back of the phone. The aluminum, which is pretty cool. Aluminum's super easy to recycle, so

[03:18] it's nice they do that. And the plastic back is about 80% recycled polymer. And recycled materials. Cobalt in the battery, tungsten in the haptics. It's kind of nice to see that. Now, this phone, talking about the display in the

[03:31] very familiar again, much like the Pixel 9a. You've got a 1080p display, 60 to 120 hertz, so very smooth refresh rate, 6.3 inch display. Now you have thinner fairly chunky bezels compared to flagships. I have to say it's one of

[03:47] those things that last year I used the Pixel 9a for like, you know, several phones for a living. So, I have access to some pretty incredible phones. And yet, when you're using this, you kind of stop seeing the bezels after just about

[04:00] a week. Nonetheless, they're chunky and I'll give you that. Now, this is also a because now we have Corning Gorilla Glass 7i on the front. So, a little bit more tough. Also, you can unlock this, again, much like before, fingerprint

[04:15] sensor, PIN, Face ID, the same usual stuff. And again, the battery is also the same as last year, 5,100 milliamp hours. Now, they're rating that for 30 hours of regular use and 120 hours in extreme power saving. So, again, if

[04:29] just not going to be plugged in for a couple days, you could do that. And uh faster. I think the wired and the wireless charging each got an increase of about 3 watts each. So, I mean, I promise there's some more differences,

[04:44] familiar phone. I'm naming a lot of things that are just like the 9A, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Google doesn't tell me exactly what the sensor is in the phone, but they said the specs are the same as last year, 48 megapixel

[04:56] primary rear sensor and 13 megapixel ultrawide. You do have a very limited zoom capability on this. You can zoom in till, depending on video or photo, about like 5 to 8X. But, the zoom is respectable in quality. It's kind of

[05:10] in to 100X, I mean, if you were trying think you'd really be usable anyway. So, the lack of a telephoto lens is kind of expected in this price range. Although, there are phones from Nothing, for

[05:23] example, that do have a telephoto lens. And if you want, I can make comparisons phones. Just leave comments below. Whichever phones get the most comments, I will be making comparisons with this one. Also, video quality on this, 4K on

[05:37] both the front and the rear lenses. It's a Pixel. So, the video is not going to be as strong as the photos, but it's definitely getting a lot better. And uh video, because I think it looks pretty solid is going to be the stabilization.

[05:50] Sometimes it's a little bit weird when you pan, but again, that's just kind of a pixel thing. We also have the usual Pixel camera experience. So, a big AI focus here. Google's trying to push everyone towards camera coach is their

[06:02] new feature that they had on the Pixel 10. And basically it's like it'll guide you to take photos and tell you what to do. I mean, I I somebody who kind of uses a camera for a living, I don't know if I see that much use in it, but I I at

[06:15] are are not really that good at taking photos and they probably could use this, but I'm curious. Like, have you ever used camera coach? And if so, have you found it helpful? I've seen some pretty poorly framed photos out there and maybe

[06:27] quite sure if it's it's a gimmick or cameras, again, getting back to the internals of this phone, same specs as last year, 8 gigs of RAM and either 128 gigs of storage or 256 GB

[06:41] one. You don't have expandable storage, once again, like I said. And you still and experience as the flagship phone. So, you're getting the whole Google call suite including hold for me, which I use all the time. Like, you call the IRS or

[06:55] just say hold for me, you don't have to listen to that music, and it'll notify You also have call screening, filters out a ton of spam and uh just unknown numbers. It can use the Google Assistant basically and say, "Hey, like, what's

[07:10] up? Who is this?" And once they tell you Google Assistant who it is, it'll then Pretty cool feature. And the one that I personally use the most is direct my call. Again, if you're calling the IRS or if you're calling anyone that has

[07:24] Google shows you all of that on the screen and you can navigate so much faster without having to wait for it to read every single item in the list. You also get all of the Google AI features on here. And I'm not a huge AI user on

[07:37] my phone. Like, I use Gemini and I I ChatGPT, but a lot of times these phone much stuff out there. However, some of them are pretty neat. Google's photo language, so you could just ask it like, "Hey, change the bricks to more of a

[07:52] outfit to blue, and it can do all of that very easily. The ultrawide lens, mid-range category. A lot of times they add it as a third useless lens, but the shots. So, if you get really close, you've got autofocus on there, and it'll

[08:07] focus and essentially give you a much better macro shot than you would if you had like a 2-megapixel macro lens. I find those incredibly useless, and this so summary of the Pixel 10a. What's actually different about it? Satellite

[08:21] SOS is probably the biggest one in my opinion. You also have that lack a got new colors on here. We've got some improvements to the display, smaller bezels, faster charging, just kind of across-the-board iterative improvements.

[08:34] That it's not going to be a a big overhaul. Like, if you have the 9a, you 10a. In fact, if you're in the market to buy one of these phones, you might want to buy the 9a. It's $100 off right now, and you're getting kind of the same

[08:47] cameras, you're getting the same processor, and things like that. By the way, this phone and the 9a were both rated for 7 years of software and OS updates, so it's pretty great that that's a future-proof design and phone

[09:00] here. But, yeah, it's going to be a fairly boring phone. This is a phone that is minimal. It works. It gives you good software, very clean minimal experience, solid cameras, solid battery life, wireless charging, really

[09:13] everything like I said that most people would want. Is it going to be better than the top-tier flagship phones? No, not at all, because this doesn't even have a telephoto lens. But, is it going to be a better purchase for most people?

[09:26] I would say probably, actually. I think a lot of people could spend $500 and they would get if they bought a flagship, because a lot lot people just wouldn't use all of the flagship features like reverse wireless charging

[09:39] video helpful. Like I said, leave a comment and let me know what I should most comments will be getting a comparison video. Thanks for watching. I'm Michael Brian and I'll see you in those comparisons.