bill_schubert | New phone (Reply)

I received my Pixel 5a yesterday two days after ordering it. Pretty amazing. With the Google transfer cable set up it was pretty much a breeze to get it going. I've still got a few things to tweak but nothing like setting up something from scratch. They really have the system down.

The two biggest changes are lack of wireless charging which is a minor annoyance at this point as the phone holds a charge a long while and my previous one pretty much lasted a couple of hours. So I'm OK with having to plug it in. I do miss just being able to throw it on the stand but I'll live.

The second weirdness is the latest update to Android which has 'gesture' method of navigation. Endeavoring to maximize screen usage Google has eliminated the bottom left and right navigation lines opting instead for what is to me a kind of magic system to accomplish everything by sliding my finger up and down, side to side. The gestures are pretty precise if you want it to do something that used to be easy on my own phone. But I'm sure that in a few days I will have forgotten how I used to do it and will say it the best system ever. The way of new tech.

Finger print authentication is perfect so far and the camera is fine:

Taken yesterday morning with my Pixel 3XL

Taken this morning with the 5a

I'll have to move in a bit closer to get a more accurate comparison but I find phone cameras today to be so good that I can't much see the variation one to the next.

I've lost some size. The phone is a bit smaller. But I'll live with it. I've gone from a Samsung Note to a Pixel XL to this. As my eyes get weaker, the visual real estate gets smaller. Not sure that is the right direction.