Even though it’s probably still a few months away, leaks are giving us new information about the Pixel 7a. This week, a hands-on leak of the Pixel 7a confirmed that Google’s next budget phone will have more RAM, one of the key design changes.
Following up on last year’s excellent Pixel 6a, the Google Pixel 7a is expected to be a big step up from the company’s last few budget phones. As we first said, the device will use the Tensor G2 from the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, charge wirelessly at 5W, and have a major camera upgrade with a 50MP main camera, a 64MP telephoto camera, and a 12MP ultrawide camera.
We’ve seen the Pixel 7a’s design a couple of times so far, but not in a lot of detail. A new hands-on leak from Zing News shows off the Pixel 7a’s hardware in detailed photos, giving us a close look at what’s to come.
The back of the phone looks a lot like the back of the standard Pixel 7, which is not a big surprise. The main difference is that this year’s phone has the updated camera bar from the Pixel 7, instead of the Pixel 6a’s completely glass camera module. The front of the phone has the same thicker bezels as last year’s phone, which seems to be the case every year.
Besides that, it is also said that the device has a single SIM slot, USB-C for charging, and some waterproofing around the SIM tray. The phone doesn’t seem to be able to fully turn on, but accessing fastboot shows that this Pixel 7a model has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. That’s more than the 6GB of RAM found in last year’s Pixel 6a and the same as the Pixel 7. Google’s A-series devices only have one storage option.
Before Google locked down the device, the original owner was able to confirm a 90 Hz display. The report also says that both of the back cameras are 12 MP, but there’s no mention that this has been confirmed by the software.
Google released the Pixel 6a on July 28, 2022, but announced it at Google I/O 2022 in May. It’s likely that the schedule will be the same this year, but nothing is set in stone yet. Google I/O 2023 will take place on May 10.
