Until now, one of the most interesting features of the Pixel ‘a’ series was that It allowed to have the excellent camera of the Pixel at a lower price.
This has come to an end on the Pixel 6a. Unlike previous ‘a’ series phones, the Pixel 6a doesn’t include the same camera hardware as the Pixel 6 or Pixel 6 Pro.
Instead of the large 50-megapixel sensor that the main cameras on the devices carry, the Pixel 6a has the same 12-megapixel sensor that the Pixel 5 and 5a used.
The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro aim higher in the smartphone category premium than the Pixel 4 or 5, so Google has had to make more cuts to launch a more affordable phone.
According to TheVerge Google President of Devices and Services Rick Osterloh summed up the challenge this way:
Basically, what we want is to try to make the core experience reach as many users as possible. That is the overall goal.
Every phone has a lot of hard-to-reduce components. And so you certainly have to change some of the key capabilities of the device to get it to where we want it to be on the price point.
In previous Pixel models, a big part of that “core experience” was the camera. Now, the most differential aspect is Google’s custom chipset, Tensor. Google has opted to use the Tensor chip in the Pixel 6a, while doing without the Pixel 6’s camera.
Would you have preferred the Pixel 6a to keep the Pixel 6’s camera?
