Pixel 10a Announced

Vincent96

Google has announced the Pixel 10a. It seems more less identical to the Pixel 9a. Notably there's no change in chip or cameras.

Some changes include:

No camera bump due to thickness increase
Brighter screen
Slightly thinner bezels
Different Gorilla Glass
Faster charging
Inherited 10-series grill design

Google Store page
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10a

Specs
https://store.google.com/product/pixel_10a_specs

What are your thoughts?

W1zardK1ng

Vincent96 Looks like they are planning to use last years chip going forward on A series phones and didn't want to skip a mid rage device this year which may be bad to their competition with iphones on this budget category.

Eirikr70

Vincent96 Considering that

their specs are similar,
the 9a can be bought at less than 3/4 of the price of the 10a,
the difference in their EOL is 1 year,

I'd go for the 9a. But since my 6a still has 1+ year to go, I'm not going out to get it a replacement.

GraphPaper

Vincent96

If I remember correctly, the 9a did not have the improved more secure modem of the 9 series, it had the 8 series version.

Wonder will the 10a upgrade in that respect over the 9a?

DohnJoe

Vincent96 No camera bump due to thickness increase

Let's take a moment to appreciate this.
Finally.

Vincent96

W1zardK1ng I think they hit the nail on the head with the 9a. There's little to change. It's a great phone.

kaisernatron

W1zardK1ng bold move considering how trashy their chip is. It belongs in the mid-range category but Google gets away with putting it in Pixel Pro Turbo whatever phones they're called. Now that we have access to Motorola with a proper chip we can finally dump Tensor

nandohyphen1

Eirikr70 I'd go for the 9a. But since my 6a still has 1+ year to go, I'm not going out to get it a replacement.

Same here with my 6a. Not getting a replacement until EOL. Well, I may look at Black Friday because I may get a good deal, but I'm planning on getting a Pro model instead of an a model. By November I'll be looking at the 10 Pro, possibly the 11 Pro (if its a decent price/supported by GrapheneOS yet).

vine

CDN $679
USD $499

TechCrunch
Google debuts $499 Pixel 10a
https://techcrunch.com/2026/02/18/google-debuts-499-pixel-10a/

Foggy

The list price of the 10a is roughly equal to the price of a 'like new' 10 so I can't see why you'd buy a 10a.

JustALilSilly

Vincent96

nandohyphen1 personally, Pro models as the name does imply is a Pro model, which probably means it does have better water resistance anyways. The only reason why I would say some pro models aren't that good is they may lack certain features like fast charging.

Norman

GraphPaper IMO if you care about the modem you could just buy the 9 instead. It's still cheaper most of the time and better in pretty much every way

Ammako

GraphPaper https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-10a-modem-3639784/

I'm interested in hearing about the fingerprint sensor, personally.

DeletedUser622

Looking forward to find out about how easy its battery is replaceable.

K8y

DeletedUser622 who said batt

DeletedUser622 Looking forward to find out about how easy its battery is replaceable.

who said battery would be replaceable?

is 10a fully supported by GoS yet?

GraphPaper

Norman

9 is a great device without doubt, for me it is my favourite Pixel to date (having started with the GOS on the Pixel 2)

Interestingly, last week Google was selling the 10 for less than the 9. Looks like the 10 has gone up in price again to make the 10a look more attractive on its release!

DeletedUser639

a case of Emperors new clothes...
Instead of releasing a device users want, like repairable, not glued together and a replaceable battery, they release devices, like dog owners hand out treats to a dog, keeping it under control and at heel.
FOMO will always make consumers purchase the latest, shiniest must have device.
The 10a 11, 12 etc are irrelevant as seemingly 2027 is the launch year of the long awaited GrapheneOS partnered device.

Vincent96

DeletedUser639 I'm looking forward to the device or devices GrapheneOS are partnering to produce. Depending on the quality and features Pixels could still be relevant. We don't have any information yet or know if the GOS phones will be good, I hope they will be, obviously.

K8y

does GOS support 10a?

phone-company

K8y Not yet as i know. Bootloaderunlock should work so let‘s see what the Team can do 💪👍

Johnnyloans

K8y User7654 joeymanny rickyrich85 schroed Mimjst igbarod lost1987 GruneKikker42

10a has "experimental support" now.
Be aware that there could be issues or no issues. Backups of important data are a good idea. As well as testing if the backups actually work--should you need them--if possible.

Web installer
https://grapheneos.org/install/web

Manual download link
https://grapheneos.org/releases#stallion

User7654

I want to take the plunge on Graphene and coming from an iPhone.

I have held off up to now because I was ultimately thinking of going for the 10a based on the fact that its a new phone and I could theoretically get up to 7 years from it (reality might be very different).

Based on other comments in this thread does anyone have an opinion on which option would be best

10a - looks like its going to be £500 (but I might have to wait a little while till its supported)
9a - I have seen these for about £400 at the moment
10 - I can get a Grade A second hand for about £550 from what I can see (is buying second hand a good idea really, you dont really know what it was used for previously?)

All in a similar sort of ball park, just wanted peoples thoughts. Thanks

Hat

User7654
All three models are good options:

The 9A is a good option if you can get a good deal for under €400 in some countries. It still has six full years of updates.
The 10a will soon be supported by GrapheneOS as it is very similar to the 9a, but there is no ETA. The screen is a bit more robust than 9a.
The 10 model offers the latest CPU generation and increased RAM, making it better suited to virtualization and opening multiple profiles in the background. The Motorola will also have more than 8 GB of RAM next year.

If you buy second hand, make sure you can unlock the bootloader to flash the OS.

JustALilSilly

Hat,

I think they're very evenly matched. The only difference is the charging speed and colors. Personally, I like the brand new colors and I think the charging speed is a really good upgrade. But if you don't care about charging speed or the colors, updates. I would recommend the 9A. I think they're both evenly priced brand new from what I've looked up they both $499-599 for both 10a new and 9a on eBay and Amazon I thimk, if you care about having a lot of hours on your phone available to you and they don't cost that much, I would highly recommend you with the both 10a and 9a.

Here's my own little story of how come I like bigger batteries, because my family wasted a lot of money during COVID on a stupid iPhone that was $600 or $800 dollars just get hard-dropped by apple with no battery change limit, not much privacy at all, the battery drain was crazy bad, you literally could only get like 2 or 3 at maximum hours of battery on that thing, ended up changing the charging port to USB usb c, honestly to put all those things on the table, the iPhone 13 mini just seemed like a recreation of the iPhone 6 same problem, same issues, can't go back to the past to change that.

Honestly, I should have just stayed with my iPhone 6 and waited a couple few years. Honestly, I would look at battery benchmarks to see if even the brand new processor is even optimized, because I only have a Google Pixel 9 Pro with grapheneos which is what I upgraded from my iPhone 13 mini this year, I was pretty young whenever I got my iPhone 13, I don't think I knew about how batteries, cpus, gpus or all that stuff worked, so that's probably why ended up with a cheesy iPhone.

I honestly have no idea if the Google Pixel's 10 series is any better than the 9's with grapheneos. I believe gsmarena has stats for every phone on there I'm pretty sure it shows the 10's are better than a 9's in battery optimization if you care about that. But truly, I think since the 10a and 9a are flat phones according to the EU drop score is way higher than all the iPhone's right now. Probably because they're using glass, which I hate the whole glass thing too.

I'm just giving all the data that I know about these phones. I don't actually own them. I only own the one that I said.

Eirikr70

I'd go for the 9a personally because of the eol being more than compensated by the price gap with the 10a. I'm reluctant to the 2nd hand but it might not be completely rational.

User7654

Thanks for the info. Interesting about the Carrier locking.

Am I reading it correctly that if I was to buy a second hand one I can test to see if its locked by doing OEM Unlocking and if it can be unlocked I will be fine?

Buying new, does this also suggest that I should buy (UK) from some where like PCWorld, where its not tied to a carrier or direct from google (which I thought was a red flag) rather than walking into a EE shop?

MSX2GOS

User7654

Just searched UK pixel 9a and saw an interesting deal at Argos, their pixel 9 is on sale brand new & unlocked £399, cheaper than the 9a from what I can see. They also seem to fully accept cash in store