The new Google Pixel 4a, set to debut on August 20, is, I believe, the best budget phone out there, selling for US$349, with a 5.8-inch screen and a generous 128 gigabytes of storage. This phone is so good, it can take on the big US$1,000 guns like the Apple iPhone 11 Pro or Samsung Galaxy S20. I’ve been playing with the new handset for several days, and it’s fair to say I’m in love with the beautiful screen, the exclusive Pixel features including instant captions of videos and transcripts of audio recordings and the excellent camera. Design and hardware The Pixel line was designed to be a state-of-the-art showcase for Google to show off the best of Android in a phone under the Made by Google line, but the company hasn’t been consistent in its marketing. Consumers will surely be confused if they walk into a store and compare the last Pixel, the 4, released in October, to what is supposed to be the smaller, cheaper cousin, the 4a. The 4 (US$799) has a 5.7-inch screen and comes with 64 GB of storage, compared to the 5.8-inch 4a (US$349) with 128 GB of storage. Software and features The 4a is missing a few features available on the 4, like motion sensing, which lets you operate the phone with a wave of the hand, and it only has the one camera lens. Touch the volume button while you’re watching a YouTube video, listening to a podcast or playing back a video you’ve just recorded, and audio captions, in real-time, begin playing. And in my tests, they seemed about 99 per cent accurate. It also has captions for your voice or video calls, in real time. However, you can’t save the transcripts. For my entire journalism career, there’s one thing I’ve wanted more than anything else: the ability to have my interviews transcribed – without having to do it myself. The Pixel 4a doesn’t do it perfectly, and it has to be done in real time, but the process works. And saves me at least an hour, if not more, of transcribing agony. Caveats: this has to be done through Google’s voice recorder app (which has excellent sound, by the way), where there is a transcript button to click as you record. And it records the text as one long dialogue, without specifying who is doing the talking, and there’s no punctuation; but trust me, I’m not complaining. It’s better than my note taking. This feature is available on the Pixel 4 as well, but you won’t find it on an iPhone or Samsung Galaxy – not yet. Performance and battery life The iPhone SE camera has one lens and the usual collection of Apple goodies: portrait mode, to blur the background, time-lapse, slow motion and stellar video. The 4a goes even further, with Portrait, time-lapse and slow-mo, plus Night Sight – the ability to shoot in ultra-low light, to the point where you can actually photograph stars and such in the skies. In my tests, this worked really nicely. (But you’ll need either a tripod or to mount the phone steady against a book or a rock, to make this work.) With the one lens, you can’t use optical zoom to get closer to the subject, but instead digital zoom, which basically just crops the image. Most digital zoom use cases are generally awful. Google uses “computational” photography to basically capture several images, and combine them for a higher resolution version. I think the results here are acceptable – but I miss the second lens. Quiet Hong Kong launch for iPhone SE 2020 amid coronavirus retail woe For video, the footage just isn’t as sharp and crisp as stuff I’ve done on an iPhone. And for photo management, Android phones just can’t compare to Apple’s iOS, which uses the “AirDrop” feature to send via Bluetooth, sans wires, from phone to device. On Android, photos by default go to Google Photos, which is generally good, but lowers the resolution of your photos unless you pay Google a fee. Your alternative is connecting your phone to the computer with a cable and transferring them that way. The one drawback of the Pixel 4a is a lower-performing battery that got me only about five hours of screen time, despite Google’s boast that it’s an all-day battery. (It may be, if you keep your brightness way down, don’t watch any video, and let the screen go dark as much as possible. That’s not how I use phones.) Conclusion At a time when top-of-the-line iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones sell for considerably more than US$1,000, it may be a great opportunity to ponder what you can get for less. The revived iPhone SE (US$399) was released in April and was a major contributor to Apple’s record-breaking recent quarterly earnings, according to the company. But the 4a dwarfs the SE in every category except for photo management. It has a bigger screen (5.8 inches versus 4.7 inches) a way more full-featured camera, more storage (128GB versus 64GB) and audio and caption features that are extraordinary and unique to the Pixel brand. Dimensions : 144mm x 69.4mm x 8.2mm Weight : 143 grams Display : 5.81-inch 1,080 x 2,340 OLED Battery : 3,140mAh OS version reviewed : Android 10 Processor : Qualcomm Snapdragon 730G Cameras : rear camera, 12.2-megapixel; front camera, 8-megapixel Memory : RAM and storage: 6GB; 128GB Colours : black Price : US$349