A few weeks ago, I said the Google Pixel 9a is one of the budget phones to buy this year. Now, a popular tech YouTuber is recommending the opposite, and I see his point.
JerryRigEverything, a tech YouTube account with more than 9 million followers, posted a new video this week where the host stress tests the new mid-range Pixel phone and performs a teardown to look at its internal components. The host finds some minor things to dislike about the external materials as well as the water and dust resistance, but for home repair enthusiasts, there's one major, major problem: The battery is nearly impossible to remove.
It seems Google has glued the Pixel 9a's 5,100mAh battery (which performed very well for us in testing) such that home removal is extremely difficult, at best. According to JerryRigEverything, most other major smartphone manufacturers, including Apple and Samsung, have stopped doing this, but Google persists.
In general, the Big Tech companies have become much more repair-friendly in the past five or six years, and there are even manufacturers like Framework who make devices with the express purpose of being repair-friendly, so it feels a bit like Google is out of step with the rest of the industry here. Clearly, Google hasn't gotten the Right To Repair memo yet.
Overall, the Pixel 9a has gotten good-to-great reviews for a budget smartphone (including from me).
And let's be honest: This is hardly a dealbreaker for a typical mobile customer. The average person wouldn't even know how to disassemble their phone in the first place. But if you want to maintain the possibility of one day replacing your Pixel's battery, this development is worth knowing about.
