Here’s the Pixel 8a, Codename Akita

Here’s something I don’t think anyone was expecting to see in the month of September — our first possible look at Google’s presumably upcoming Pixel 8a, codename Akita.

To have two images of the Pixel 8a, of its frontside and backside, before the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro have even shipped is remarkable. Heck, we don’t even have stable Android 14 yet. We’re officially in the twilight zone it seems. To give you a sense of how early this is, we don’t expect to see the Pixel 8a to be made available for purchase until about May of 2024. That would be one whole year from the Pixel 7a.

So, moving away from our minds exploding, let’s discuss what we see. We see much round, such bezel. Building on what the Pixel 8 is doing with its roundness, Google almost appears to be exaggerating it even more, with the Pixel 8a having not a single right angle with exception to the camera bar. Due to this roundness, we can see on the front that there is a considerable bezel around the phone’s display. In my experience, photos never help a bezel in terms of size, so I won’t start judging based solely on what I see here.

The only specs we can gather from the photos are two rear-facing cameras, under display fingerprint reader, and a selfie camera cutout. According to the original poster of these photos, the phone will be powered by the Tensor G3 processor.

We would love to hear your hot take on this phone’s lack of corners.

// @yabhishekhd