I currently have an extremely slow Redmi 9A because I smashed my lovely Pixel 4a with the door of the car. Twice.
I loved my Pixel so much that I’m thinking on getting the Pixel 7a this week. I feel inclined to the Pixels because of the camera.
Do you think it is a good option? Do you recommend another brand?
My budget is $500 max.
I bought a Nothing Phone 1 in October last year, which sadly developed a hardware fault in April (managed to return it for a full refund of course). I didn’t want to pay out for a new phone given the time of year, and I’ve always been opposed to paying out for a flagship. Having said that, I ended up picking up a Galaxy S21 refurbished from Amazon for £250, which has been an amazing experience. My partner has had Galaxy phones for the last 6 years, and I’ve always found the UI to be incredibly bloated. It took me all of 20 minutes to slim it down to where it feels like stock Android. I’d definitely recommend it 
Pixel 7a is probably really nice. A good friend of mine also loves the camera of his Pixel (6).
Personally, the Redmi Note 10 Pro offers everything I need from a phone.
Owning a Redmi right now makes me not want to buy another one. It’s always asking me to accept some terms and conditions about apps for backgrounds or carousels I don’t like 
Also some built-in apps contain ads. ADS!
I owned Redmi phones for around 4 years I think. They’re good budget phones, but honestly a flagship (refurbished/second-hand) is a better decision in my eyes. For the camera alone 
How long do these flagship models receive OS upgrades (usually) if you don’t want to flash your own and just use everything normally (as is)? One reason that held me back from refurbished phones is that they are likely older already and might not receive upgrades. Another is that there might still be some malware on them or other stuff…
Samsung guarantees 4 major Android releases for all Galaxy phones (S21 onwards), which is more than sufficient for me 
I’ve always recommended Samsung’s to my family who need a phone that I can trust will be pretty solid and have good software support. An S22 refurbished in excellent condition is around £450-480 on eBay right now so is around your budget and I think you could get a good 2 years out of it minimum (assuming you don’t smash it like your 4a 
).
That said, I do think the Pixels are viable options - a 7a is certainly a lot cheaper and they do have fantastic cameras, so I’d struggle to justify why the Samsung is worth nearly £200 more.
I’d still go with the Samsung because I’ve had one too many bad experiences with Google products and I’m just not willing to give them anymore of my money. That’s a personal grudge though!
Very happy with my Pixel 7!
Could you send me some random sample photos you took with the phone? Please send them in original quality, as I’d love to see the actual quality before they get compressed (e.g. WhatsApp always limits img size and as a result quality is lost)
I went with the Pixel 6a for $299. Someone will bring it to me from the US.
The Pixel 7a is $499 so not worth for me right now that I don’t have a job
How about an ancient iPhone like the one on rocking atm ?
I’m starting to like apples ecosystem.
E: overlooked your last post, congrats(and congrats to that hero for bringing that phone to your country )
E2 I’m starting to feel like a phone of the size of the 11 pro max is a tad small for the size of my hands
I hope you never use the fingerprint reader, the one on the Pixel 6a is only marginally better than the one on the Pixel 6, which has never worked for me and which has prompted me to return the phone after 2 very frustrating hours trying to set it up.
I would not recommend any phone with a front-mounted fingerprint reader behind the screen; the best readers were those rear-mounted, but almost no manufacturer does that anymore. The least bad you can find today are the side-mounted ones.
The Pixel 7 has face recognition, works well. The Fingerprint reader (front screen) is not as good as I got used to from Sony Xperia, but works for the few apps that need/use it … (I added three fingers, one of them always works.)
The fingerprint reader on my Pixel 4a wasn’t that great either, so if the one on the 6a works the same or better, that’s fine
I got my phone on Sunday and looks good.
I bought a couple of screen protectors too but I made some mistakes while trying to put them on the phone (because of a tiny dot of dust landing on them) so I wasted some dollars on them.
The phone performs so good and as expected the camera is awesome. I’m using it a lot, and like my previous 4a, I have to charge the battery around twice a day.
Oh about the fingerprint reader, it’s working fine, maybe the same as the 4a.
I still can’t get used to the fact that the fingerprint reader is on the front and from time to time I try to unlock it by touching the back
Wait, you need to charge the phone’s battery twice a day? That seems quite often to me. What’s the battery’s capacity?