Google has just revealed that the Pixel 7a phone is coming. Was this by accident? It was certainly a sideways approach to a launch, but since it’s from Google, we can take it at face value. Here’s what happened.
A bit of background: last year, Google added a series of battery statistics, so that users could see the date the battery was manufactured and the number of charging cycles it had completed. This new feature was deemed useful, if limited in its information. This addition arrived in the first Android 14 Quarterly Platform Release update back in late 2023. However, by the time the second update, QPR2 arrived this month—it reaches the U.S. tomorrow, Monday, March 11—the new feature had gone missing.
This wasn’t a mistake, though. A Google bug tracker page spotted by 9to5Google, it was explained that it will be coming back in the future. And exactly when was revealed on the page, too.
It said, “We only enable this page on Pixel 8a and beyond, so this is WAI(Working as Intended).”
Which tells us that the feature will come to future models. More importantly, for the first time, Google has confirmed that the Pixel 8 will be followed by the Pixel 8a.
Now, we could have guessed this would be the order of things—Google has had an A series since the Pixel 3 and Pixel 3XL were succeeded by the Pixel 3a and Pixel 3a XL. That was the only year there were two A series models, unless you count the Pixel 4a and Pixel 4a 5G as separate phones. Since then, we’ve seen the Pixel 5a, Pixel 6a and Pixel 7a. So, it doesn’t take a genius to predict the Pixel 8a would be making its way to us this year.
Nonetheless, it’s cool to know it’s coming. Google’s A series phones are often much better value than can be legitimately expected, taking key Pixel features and delivering them at a much lower price than the phone they follow.
Design is often similar but not identical and can introduce innovations, such as one model that had wireless charging without requiring a glass back thanks to a clever mix of metal with a cunning cut-out and plastic overlay.
This is not how Google usually announces its products, so it’s possible that this was an accident.
There’s no certainty of when the phone might be launched, but it could be around the time of the Google I/O conference in May.
