It’s hard to get excited about a new smartphone, and Google’s new Pixel 5a with 5G is no exception. Don’t get me wrong, the $449 is well

Larry Magid (Gary Reyes / Mercury News)

equipped and very well priced, and if I were looking to buy a new phone, it would likely be at the top of my list.  One of the reasons that it’s not exciting is that, in most ways, it’s nearly identical to last year’s Pixel 4a with 5G. But there is one improvement that will make a difference in many people’s lives. It has a larger and higher capacity battery.

Battery life is a big deal

Battery life is a huge deal. I have had cell phones die on me after a few hours of use, and unless you’re near an electrical outlet or a car charger, it can be a real problem. It’s one of the reasons I don’t use my phone as a bike computer when I’m out for a long ride. If I have an emergency, I want that phone to be able to call for help. Having a charge on your battery can literally be the difference between life and death.

The new Pixel has a 4620 mAh battery, which is 22% higher capacity than last year’s 3800 mAh battery.  Even Google’s current $699 flagship phone — the Pixel 5, had only a 4000 mAh battery. I can’t say exactly how long it will last between charges. Like a car’s EPA rating, “your mileage will vary” depending on how you use it. Some apps use more energy than others. What I can say is that this phone got me through an entire day of heavy use with battery power to spare, which is more than I can say for most phones I’ve tested.  Another thing about battery life is that the lithium-ion batteries used in cell phones degrade over time, depending on how many charge cycles they experience and other factors such as overcharging. It’s a gradual process which, according to the website PowerBankExperts.com, should allow a “typical smartphone … to go through 300-800 full recharging cycles and still retain 80% of its power.” Modern cell phone batteries aren’t user replaceable, so phones with a significantly degraded battery are good candidates for a replacement.

There are a couple of other improvements with the new Pixel 5a with 5G, most notably ip67 water and dust resistance, which means that it can be submerged in about 3 feet of water for about a half hour while being impervious to damage from dust and sand. It’s not waterproof — you shouldn’t go swimming with it — but it’s likely to survive a quick dip in a toilet, which is how I once destroyed a smartphone. The new phone’s 6.34 inch display is slightly larger than last year’s 6.2-inch screen.

There are no changes when it comes to processing power or cameras. The Pixel 5A has the same Snapdragon 765G chipset with 6GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as the previous model and sports a 12.2-megapixel rear camera and an 8 MP front camera with the same specs and features as last year. Like the 4a but unlike the Pixel 5 and most high-end phones, the 5a keeps the standard 3.5 mm headphone jack, which is great if you want to use your old wired headphones or earbuds or connect the phone to a stereo system like the one in my old mini-van that isn’t equipped with Bluetooth. It also means you can listen to music and charge it at the same time, which isn’t the case with most phones these days unless you attach an adapter. Like all recent  Pixel phones, it will be among the first to get upgraded versions of Android, like the soon-to-be-released Android 12. Non-Google phones can take months or even years (if ever) to get the latest version.  iPhones, however, are all upgradable on the same day, assuming they have the hardware to accommodate the latest version of iOS.

Waiting for the 6

If you’re looking for a so called “budget phone,” than the 5a with 5G is an excellent choice. But if you’re holding out for the latest and greatest high-end phone, then you’ll have to wait a few months as both Google and Apple are expected to release new higher-end models. Google has already announced its upcoming Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, which will feature the company’s new Tensor chip, which is expected to be a significant improvement over the Pixel 5 in terms of its computational powers and artificial intelligence chops, which could improve its camera, search, text-to-speech, captioning, search and other features according to The Verge.

Likely starting at $699 (pricing hasn’t been announced), the Pixel 6 will cost considerably more than the 5a, which is also the case with Apple’s current iPhone 12 ($799 for the 6.1-inch model at $699 for the 5.4 inch mini) and, of course, the upcoming iPhone 13. Samsung’s Galaxy phones are also quite pricey.  You can usually save a substantial amount of money on a new phone by trading in or selling your old one and can sometimes find deals through your cell phone carrier. But, when it comes to shelling out new money, the least expensive phone is the one you already have because you already own it.

Larry Magid is a tech journalist and internet safety activist.