Google Pixel 5 and 4A with 5G review: Humble upgrades make for a grand phone

(Google)

Get Google’s Pixel phones out of their box and there’s nothing much new you can do. The new phones have no spicy new features, no novelty that marks them out, and even the 5G connection that gives them their name is largely useless given the infrastructure is not yet ready to take full advantage of it.

But turn them on, live with them for a while, and you realise that these phones might be humble but they are far from humdrum. Google’s Pixel phones have occasionally felt like an experiment, which has made them both exciting and sometimes alienating; the new phones, despite being the first with 5G, feel like the end of that experimenting.

Everything else that’s true of the Pixel line-up is true here. They remain the best way to experience Android, since Google installs a clean version of the operating system without the cruft that is often added to other manufacturers phones. The camera is still astonishing, and is improved this time.

But Google is not just leaning on those perennial facts, but introducing a phone that is a great all-rounder, with everything you might want out of a handset. It’s not just the best way to experience Android, but a great Android phone, too; it’s still got a great camera, but it’s no longer quite so built around that technology, meaning that it doesn’t feel quite so much like a bunch of lenses with a phone attached.

What’s more, Android 11 is more quietly smart than other recent updates. It’s very clever – it includes improvements to the Recorder app which has the astonishing ability to transcribe in real time, for instance – but it’s not quite so clever-clever.

It’s a tame phone, rather than the thrillingly wild beast that some other Pixels have been, and which some of its competitors aim for. That may be somewhat boring, but it’s no bad thing: this phone is a workhorse.

In keeping with the feel of the phone, the new Pixel’s change from their predecessor in all the ways you’d expect, and not really any others: vastly improved battery life, a more symmetrical design, the adoption of a wider camera lens. They are, in short, a fix for everything wrong with the Pixel 4, which had a battery that ran out worryingly quickly and left out the wide-angle camera that Apple had adopted at the same time.

It also looks different on the outside, thanks to an aluminium back. The Pixel 4 had a smooth glass black, which looked classy but left it open to smudges and scratches. The glass was thought to be required for wireless charging – as it turns out, however, Google has found a way to send that wireless charging through the phone’s aluminium back, which is something of a surprise.

But the miracle is actually the feel of the thing: it doesn't feel like metal at all, with all the cold and smooth texture that evokes, but rather rough and comfortable. It's something like a pebble, lightly hewn and sitting neatly in the hand. Gone is the heft of the Pixel 4, and the 5 feels both lighter and more comfortable. (The 4A does not have this feeling: the back is made of plastic, and you can tell.)

That’s helped out by both phones having received the same design improvements. They’re now symmetrical, top to bottom, with the notch in the top that stored a range of different hardware swapped out for a holepunched camera lens in the corner of the screen. That might sound like it would get in the way, but it is neatly integrated with the software, and very quickly blends into the phone in the same way as the first notches did.

The lack of "forehead" means that much of the technology that was stored in there has gone, with only the camera lens remaining. The Pixel 4 had been the first to incorporate Google’s “Project Soli” technology, which allows it to precisely monitor the movements of people in front of the phone – and had been one of those exciting new upgrades introduced with last year’s phones that the Pixel 5 and 4A with 5G have avoided.

The lack of the more extravagant features that the Project Soli technology had enabled can't really be missed: the phone was launched with much discussion about how you could make gestures in front of it to skip tracks, for instance, but it's hard to imagine that anyone did that for very long, not least because it made you feel a little ridiculous.

But it also means that the more useful, simple features are gone, too – the phone's ability to sense that you were coming near and wake up the screen made it feel very smart, and crucially there's no longer a facial recognition scanner to allow you to unlock the phone just by unlocking it. There's nothing wrong with this – the fingerprint sensor on the back is both nice placed and neatly disguised, and works quickly enough that you won't resent it – but it does feel odd to be taking such a clear step bac

In  the fingerprint sensor on the back is both nice placed and neatly disguised, and works quickly enough that you won't resent it

The Pixel 4A and 5G are actually generally far more similar than they are different, and the cheaper version still gets almost all of the new hardware that Googel has added. It's easier to list the differences than the similarities: for the reduced price, you get a slightly slower refresh rate, a larger display but one with bigger bezels, a plastic rather than aluminium body, 6GB of RAM rather than 8GB, and no wireless charging or water resistance.

They're not minor differences, but they are subtle enough that the 4A does not feel like a cheap phone, or just a budget version of the 5. Instead, it feels like a good phone in its own right – with the potential exception of the plastic back, Google could probably have got away with introducing the 4A as its premium phone.

In fact, the names are a little misleading because the 4A with 5G is far more like the 5 than it is the standard version of the 4A. The Pixel 4A only arrived in the UK earlier this month, but already looks out of date compared with the 5G: it has a smaller display, a much smaller battery, and none of the new camera hardware or features. The price difference is not insubstantial – it costs $150 to upgrade to the 5G version – but it's worth noting that you're getting far more than just a better internet connection.

In fact, the usefulness of that network connection is just about the least interesting thing about the phone, despite the fact that its nominally what marks out the new 4A from the slightly older version. 5G networks still remain few and far between and using them means having the right data plan; the best case for having it is that its future-proofing, which is true, but also another way of saying that you can’t really take advantage of it yet.

It’s an indication of what’s going on with the Pixel 5 and 4A with 5G that their most exciting feature is actually their least charming. They are quotidian phones – and that’s surely good for something we use every day, and rely on now maybe more than ever.