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Phones · Google Pixel

Google Pixel 3a

34owners with an opinion
70%of verdicts positive
15/6positive/negative since 2024
3 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for reliability and performance; criticized for ease of use and display.

What owners wrote

NeutralOwned 3 years
it's a simple reason - google relies on automated tests and doesn't do manual testing at all. if they did plenty of bugs on the home scree launcher would've been found. source: I used a pixel 3a for about 3 years, now I have a pixel 6a. all errors I have run into are things only a human can find. low laying fruit.
Doesn’t like itOwned 2 years
> I _have_ watched those videos and they show burn-in after an alarmingly short amount of use. Debatable, it's not what those content creators say, and I definitely wouldn't call it alarming if it requires you to stare at gray background in a dark room. It isn't even half as bad as IPS backlight bleeding or VA angles. Different people have different standards. You don't have to buy it if you don't like it. > Adding one more reference, here is a recent post to /r/monitors showing burn-in after 2 years of constant use Pixel clean cannot run if the monitor is constantly receiving signal. Also show me an IPS after 2 years of constant use. The backlight can degrade as well. [edit] Furthermore, 3 year warranty covers your burn in, so I guess they would happily replace your monitor once the burn in normally visible. [/edit] > Get back to us about your burn-in after 8.6 more years. Feel free to ping my email (@gmail.com) at that time. > I've experienced burn-in on my pixel 3a after 2 years 2019. My Nothing Phone 2 is from 2023. I've been having it for 1y 8mo+ and experienced zero burn in on the same gray test. For reference, I don't use automatic brightness and it's almost full-brightness all-day (except evenings).
Likes it
Completely agree. I switched from Android to iOS... 6 years ago now? and the keyboard immediately felt off. I thought it was just something related to needing to adjust, but I reused my old Android (Pixel 3a) for the first time a few days ago (cuz I'm working on an Android app and wanted to try it on an actual phone) and the keyboard just works. No typo, no ass completions, I can actually type fast as I feel it and the text ends up mostly (99%) correct on the first try. On iOS I sometimes really struggle writing exactly what I want (the worst offending situation is iOS "correcting" a word when I hit send, so what's sent is literally not what I typed)
Likes it
i recently put debian (mobian) on a pixel 3a and it's pretty solid, though i haven't tried it out as daily driver yet. claude code makes stuff like that super accessible to do in your spare time. another example is installing debian on a synology 918+, there's no way i would've had the grit to do that without ai. it's open season for any gadget that's got a debug uart port.
Doesn’t like it
I installed PostmarketOS with Plasma-Mobile on my ancient Pixel 3a a month ago as something to play with and I was actually astonished at how polished it seemed. The keyboard was perfectly usable, apps were quick to load, I could do silly things like open full-fat Blender or OrcaSlicer on a tiny phone screen if I desired. Sadly old Pixels don't support video out over USB-C for whatever reason so I can't do what I really wanted to do and dock my phone into a USB dock for a desktop experience, but it's good enough to have me considering buying a more modern supported phone so I can try out daily-driving the experience.
Neutral
> That's why I had kept my pixel 4a for years until is finally kicked the bucket 2 years ago. RIP I'm sure it was a noble device. My Pixel 3a is currently my wireless router for very German reasons. I worry this will kill off the still-decent battery life, as has happened with my OG Pixel. I have since allied myself with what I personally consider the devil of consumer electronics just to stay on this boat.
Likes it
I loved my pixel 3a - it did the work then I upgraded to a 6a - overheating, battery exploded - google refused to change it coz it was bought in the uk - while I'm now in the US - as if I didn't trade my US bought 3a for a pixel 6a in the UK - some android version brought 2 photo apps - so I recovered some via the cloud - lost others finally gave up and moved back to using an iPhone - transition was easy - I recovered everything that was left intact on my iPhone SE before switching to a Pixel 3a so yeah f*k google phones
Likes it
I've used GrapheneOS on a Pixel 3a, 5, 8 and 10 Pro so far and it's worked really well. I couldn't imagine going back. The only things I'm missing (which don't exist in other OS'es either): - Being able to configure contact scopes in such a way that the app in question only gets access to the phone numbers of the contacts belonging to the label I specified, e.g. "WhatsApp", nothing more. Yes, one can of course add contacts' phone numbers to the contact scopes "by hand" but 1) there is a limit on the number of contacts/phone numbers configured this way, and 2) AFAIK there is no way to back up that list. - Being able to install browser extensions in Vanadium. - Being able to configure multiple VPNs at once, e.g. for Tailscale, ad filtering, blocking HackerNews during times when I should be doing something more productive :) etc., especially since the Vanadium browser doesn't support extensions (see above). I was hoping that the Rethink app might implement something like this ( https://github.com/celzero/rethink-app/issues/1047 ) but it doesn't look like it's coming and it'd probably be much better to do this at the OS level.
Neutral
LineageOS? /e/OS? ArrowOS? Android has so much momentum that seems like it would be difficult to avoid a fork. I know Waydroid exists, but I'm not sure that's good enough. Ubuntu Touch sounds really cool too, but I've put effort into it with a used Google Pixel 3A and it's not an easy, cheap thing to try out right now. And it's still dependent on binary blobs for drivers, as far as I know. Not a great situation. Regarding banking apps and things like that, I don't run into to any issues except for not being able to scan checks for deposit on the mobile website. And also I have to have physical credit cards. If you can't do what you need, consider changing to a local credit union which has your interests in mind far more than a for-profit bank. I've never run into a need for apps for a government purpose, but perhaps I will someday. I'm sure my situation where I live may be different than your situation where you live. I don't use an open source fork of Android daily and from what I can tell the best option that exists today. The only hardware that I know will continue to be open enough for this to be viable in the future is Fairphone. I hope there are others. I would definitely would NOT trust Google Pixel to remain open for the foreseeable future. Personally, I'm trying to get out of the habit of using my phone anyway, so I might as well have laptop or desktop hardware that can fulfill my needs.
Neutral
> Why would i want half assed google walled garden when I could get the Apple one? Can’t disagree more. Android has both better phones and better UX. Apple is usually lagging the Asian brands by years. I went from a Pixel 3A to an iPhone 13 and just switched back to a Pixel 10 Pro and gosh the iPhone was a complete wreck. It’s even worse with their new UI. Unless you are somehow stuck in the Apple ecosystem, I don’t understand why people pay more for it. The idea than the Android experience is somehow subpar when all Apple has done for the past five years is merely copying it is crazy to me.
Likes it
Hi. I have a Google Pixel 3a running PostmarketOS https://postmarketos.org/ and it holds up pretty well. My phone lost 20% today with light usage and will maybe lose 60% if I scroll social media a lot. I was actually surprised it is this good. I reinstalled recently and before the reinstall I had much worse battery life (Maybe 8 hours with normal usage). I think it was because of Syncthing running in the background. It is also possible to use s2idle suspend which will improve the battery life even more but you will not be able to receive calls during suspend (though that may also be fixed in the future)
Neutral
I switched from a Pixel 3a to an iPhone 16 and it really bothers me that it's way too huge for everyday usage. Maybe I have extremely short thumbs but here's the maximum reach I have on the screen when I hold my phone "normally" in my hand: https://i.postimg.cc/Cx97jxLZ/iphone16reach.png - I can't reach the upper part of the screen at all, without doing finger-gymnastics or using my other hand. I'd love to switch to a phone that is 50-60%% of the size of the iPhone 16 but there are essentially no (modern) options for this. It's really a bummer :(
Doesn’t like it
pixel devices are nice when they work. but damn hardware quality is shoddy in terms of aging. my pixel 6a battery got swollen with less than 3 years. I have a first gen iphone se still in use. I also had a pixel 3a that I couldn't find a screen replacement for luckily for me -- google accepted a trade in when the 6a got released. the pixels have a overheating problem -- this you can google for. oh yeah, when automatic android updates happen a bunch of your settings are reset even something simple as UI-theme.
Likes it
My Pixel 6a (my current phone) has no battery swelling. On the other hand, it takes over a minute to decide that it's confirmed a GPS location. The Pixel 3a will do the same thing in more like one second. The utter failure of the GPS on the Pixel 6a (and possibly other related phones?) seems to be a known, common issue. I do have overheating problems. The phone won't work outdoors in climates that are less nice than California. Which surprises me, since that's most of the world.
Likes it
If USB-C becomes the new standard for wired headphones, I'm ok with that, especially if it means thinner phones. I inherited a Pixel 3A a couple years after it was released, and I still have it. I didn't even realize that headphone jacks were being phased out. It would be nice if we started to get more than one usb port on a phone, but I already have small USB-C docks for laptops that would work well.
Doesn’t like it
You know I totally agree with you on Gnome being superior. Heck, my preferred WM is DWM and I would use it every day if I could. But here I am, on a Mac, just because I just CANNOT deal with another hardware related issue again. I used desktop linux most of my life (ages 12-28). But with a job and a family, I just don't have time for a single second of down time or debugging my computer. Same for android vs iOS. Used Android for 10 years, switched to iOS. Tried to go back with Pixel 3a, and it would freeze up maybe once a month. That's too much for me. My iPhone has frozen up maybe once in 2 years. Before you judge me, I do extensive infra shit at work and fix broken systems all the time. I just cannot deal with it on my personal devices.
Doesn’t like itHasn’t owned it
> 7 year support Funny to see that on their marketing page. The fact that they decided to drop support for the pixel 3a ~3 years after its release was fucked up. One of the reasons I stopped buying android devices.