The Google Pixel 3a XL Review: Does Mid-Range Make Sense?
by Andrei Frumusanu on June 27, 2019 8:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Mobile
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon 670
- Pixel 3a
- Pixel 3a XL
Battery Life
Battery life on the Pixel 3a XL should be good: The Snapdragon 670 SoC is manufactured on a 10LPP process node and the microarchitecture should be in line with the Snapdragon 845. In effect, I expect the unit to have similar efficiency as the S845 generation of flagships.
The battery capacity of the 3a XL is also relatively large: 3700mAh. It’s to be noted that Google here is advertising the rated capacity, whilst some other vendors in the last few years have started to advertise the typical battery capacity, which can be 100-150mAh higher than the rated one. Props to Google to remaining honest in their marketing numbers here.
In the our web-browsing test, we indeed see the Pixel 3a XL perform extremely well with a result of 11.3h. As I mentioned, the phone falls very closely to the efficiency of S845 devices with similar battery capacity: the OnePlus 6T being the closest comparison point to the 3a XL.
The phone is able to showcase much better battery life over the Pixel 2 XL and the Pixel 3 in the charts because these two phones suffer from inefficient LG panels and DDICs. Unfortunately we don’t have a Pixel 3 XL to compare to.
In PCMark we again see equality with S845 devices of similar capacity: Again the 3a XL falls in almost the same range as the OnePlus 6T here.
Overall, the battery life of the Pixel 3a XL is excellent. Google did well with opting not to go with LG for this line-up as I fear it would have resulted notably worse battery life results, and I hope the company does the same for the Pixel 4 phones.
Whilst we don’t have a review unit at hand to test, we expect the regular Pixel 3a to perform 15-20% worse, in line with the 23% smaller battery capacity of 3000mAh.
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jjj - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
400$ and up is high end by any standard, not mid range.Megatomic - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
In a world where flagships cost ~$1K USD you believe $400 USD is high?RSAUser - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Yes, 400 is starting flagship if you look at what's currently in the "mid range" section. Just because Apple made everyone up flagship prices, doesn't mean all our budgets went up.Hrel - Friday, July 12, 2019 - link
Couldn't agree more, $400 still stands as my absolute max. Sony offers vastly superior products for the price, granted you gotta wait 3-6 months after release but legit, who cares?I have no idea why Anandtech doesn't review Sony phones, especially when they're so vastly superior to so much else, especially Huwai which they shouldn't even be mentioning on here. Chinese crap.
Huwaii is communist evil crap, get it off this site!
piroroadkill - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
You're thinking relative - that's meaningless - thinking in absolute terms in this case is much more useful. Yes, phones that cost more than 400 USD could easily be considered expensive.The fact flagships cost a grand is irrelevant - the pricing they've decided on is beyond ridiculous - it doesn't mean our window should shift
sonny73n - Friday, June 28, 2019 - link
“In a world where flagships cost ~$1K USD you believe $400 USD is high?”In your small world maybe. I still can’t believe that this day and age where we have all the infos on the internet, most people in the West still have their heads stuck in the toilet. Not many of them how much, say an iPhone cost to manufacture. They only instantly believe the phone worth at its retail price. When something only costs about $350 to manufacture, labor and all, but sell to you for more than $1k is nothing but a rip-off. Capitalism at its finest.
Yoi can get a flagship phone for less than &400. You just have to get your head out of the toilet first.
tuxRoller - Thursday, July 4, 2019 - link
Yes, ONLY in the West=_=AdditionalPylons - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
High end refers to the statistical distribution of prices. For smartphones nowadays, $400 is definitely not the high end.As the prices have gone up over the last years, so does the level which depend on the distribution, such as the terms "high-end", "mid-range" and "low-end".
That said, I agree that $400 and can still be described with the words "expensive", "a lot of money", "not worth it" etc., but then we're more into subjective terminology.
warreo - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Obvious troll is obvious.PeachNCream - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
Agreed, pricing is way out of line and there are many, many more affordable options out there. Just because the maximum price for a phone is far north of $1k these days does not mean that dividing by two results in mid-range. That is a delusional state of mind the industry would like to promote and only a few people are mindless enough to buy into.