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16th May 2021

Tech Corner: Flagship phones are nice, but the midrange is where most people are at

Alan Loughnane

pixel 4a review

Google make good phones.

Welcome to the party, pals. You’re reading the latest edition of Tech Corner and i’m very grateful you took the time to join me.

Yes, it is true I did steal my opener from a Die Hard movie, but don’t hold it against me too much, I’ve been watching a lot of Bruce Willis movies lately.

Much like Bruce Willis deciding to take Ben Affleck’s place and save the world at the end of Armageddon, choosing a new phone in 2021 can be a heart-wrenching and difficult thing to do.

While much of the lauding falls upon the flagship phones, many of these are simply too expensive to buy outright by the regular Joe Soap, without locking yourself into what may be an unfriendly contract.

But what if you want a good phone, with a quality camera, a battery that won’t die at 7pm, and capable of handling multiple running apps without having a seizure in your hand, there’s plenty of less expensive options out there for you.

I’m going to give you a little piece of advice, you can get the vast majority of what you need on the mid-range market and there’s nothing more mid-rangey in price that delivers more than the Google Pixel 4a, which was released in the second half of 2020.

Google has a habit of creating some very good, price friendly phones so it’s quite a statement when we say this is the best phone they’ve made in years.

From a performance point of view, it matches the sort of smooth operation you’d expect of many top of the range phones over the past few years, even its upper-middle range Snapdragon 730G is only 4G capable.

Its size makes it far more one hand friendly than a lot of phones on the market but some may dislike the plastic feel to the design.

All in all, its compact size, clean interface and fantastic camera should appeal to anyone looking for a phone capable of doing the day-to-day tasks like browsing social media and emails, while also delivering some class photos.

The Google Pixel 4a is available from €389 on the Google Store.

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