The Pixel 4a refuses to stay hidden just
as firmly as Google refuses to just announce the phone and get it over with.
The latest leak comes in the form of cases showing off the phone’s design from
every angle.
This will be Google’s first phone with a
punch hole selfie camera, which allowed the company to slim down the top bezel
compared to the Pixel 4. The design of the rear camera hump is unchanged, even
though it houses only a single 12MP module and its LED flash (the premium Pixel
4 has two cams on the square).
The back is also home to the fingerprint
reader as the Pixel a phones are the budget-oriented offering from the search
giant (not that the expected price of US$ 400 is exactly cheap). You’ll be glad to
hear that the 3.5mm headphone jack is alive and well on the top side of the
phone. The USB-C port is on the bottom, flanked by two grilles – one of them
might be decorative or Google may have switched to bottom-firing speakers.
The 3a model used the earpiece as the
other half of the stereo speaker setup, but it had a thicker notch to work
with. Can a big enough speaker fit on the 4a? That remains to be seen when
Google finally lifts the cover and shows us the Pixel 4a for real. We don't
know when that might be, since Google I/O was cancelled. For now, we have leaks
to tell us about details like the chipset (S730), battery and others – more
details here.
By the way, the renders of the transparent
case show a turquoise color, which shows up quite rarely. Previous leaks are usually
“Just Black” and occasionally “Clearly White”. It is quite close to this color
from early January.