Google's A-series lineup of Pixel phones tends to be controversial. It's a mid-cycle release, which typically comes after the base-model Pixel is heavily discounted, leaving a ton of feature overlap. This year's Google Pixel 9a is more of the same but with a twist. To find out whether the money spent on the midrange Pixel 9a is better than the flagship Pixel 9, I tested both side-by-side for almost two weeks.
For the first time in recent memory, the Pixel 9a has a completely different design than the base Pixel 9 — kind of. The general oval-shaped camera cutout is still present on the Pixel 9a, but the iconic Pixel 9 camera bar is gone. With this change, the Pixel 9a's back is almost completely flat, but not all the way.
