Google may have teased the Pixel 4a in a recent advert for its Google Fi cellular service. It may just be a coincidentally similar design, but it's still got Google smartphone fans interested.
Originally posted to SlashLeaks by user BLUEJOSH9725 (via MobileSyrup), the adverts for Google Fi include a basic illustration of a smartphone. It's not really the focus of the ad, and it's drawn in Google's typically minimalist fashion, but combining this with our knowledge of existing leaks shows some similarities with the Pixel 4a.
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The image seems based on a Pixel phone since it uses the same button layout, with the power button and the two volume buttons all arranged on the right side. You can also see it has a colored power button, a design flourish that debuted on the Pixel 3a last year. Here it's a pale pink, which isn't a color found on the Pixel 3a or Pixel 4. This may indicate what the button will look like on one of the Pixel 4a's two known colorways: Just Black and Barely Blue.
Then there's the matter of the front camera. The Pixel 4a is rumored to be Google's first phone with a punch-hole notch, rather than a bezel. This phone doesn't have a large top bezel, and in one of the images you can see what looks like a cutout for the selfie camera, further adding weight to the rumors we've heard so far.
It's possible that this is meant to be a generic placeholder Pixel rather than the Pixel 4a specifically. The bezels around the phone are even on all sides, whereas even the Pixel 4a is thought to continue the Pixel series' trademark thick chin.
The Pixel 4a also got an early mention from one of the biggest wireless carriers out there. As spotted by Droid Life, a Pixel 3 and 4 update page on Verizon explicitly mentions the Pixel 4a when discussing Google's new car crash detection feature.
Other leaks tell us that the Pixel 4a will be equipped with a Snapdragon 730 chipset and 8GB RAM, single cameras on the back and front, and will have an OLED FHD 5.8-inch display. The new Pixel was thought to be launching imminently for a few months, but the date looks to have been postponed due to coronavirus-related delays. We're now expecting a reveal in July.
These rumored features and its expected price of around $400 will put the Pixel 4a in the same arena as the iPhone SE (2020). Although the iPhone SE has a much more powerful CPU (the same A13 chip found in the iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro), it has much less RAM, and a smaller 4.7-inch LCD display.
The two phones both use just a single rear camera, likely with a near-identical sensor size too. So it will come down to the phone's post-processing abilities to decide if the Pixel 4a can replace the iPhone SE in our picks for the best camera phones.
