Does a mid-range phone like Google Pixel 10a provide all you’ll ever need?

The arrival of the Google Pixel 10a won’t come as any great surprise. Google pioneered having a mid-range of ‘a’ designation smartphones (see also similarly named devices from Nothing, where the 3a is about to be superseded by the 4a) and the release schedule has stayed close to the original template; introduce a flagship (the Pixel 10) and follow up six months later with a mid-range device. Six months on from that, introduce the new flagship, and so on.

Collectively, we’re not upgrading our phones nearly as often as manufacturers would like. It’s also safe to say that the age of AI hasn’t made sufficient inroads into the smartphone market to be considered a killer app. Even Google, which made such a song and dance about Gemini integration a few years back, is underselling the Pixel 10a’s AI elements as ‘helpful’, rather than ‘useful’ or even the more hyperbolic ‘essential’.