Google Pixel 9a delayed, but for good reason

Google has announced the Pixel 9a, its latest affordable phone for those wanting that Pixel camera and Gemini AI experience without the cost of the Pixel 9 models. But strangely you can’t order it yet.

While the price has been confirmed as £499 in the UK, $499 in the US and A$849 in Australia – and it’s listed on the Google Store in each region – there’s no option to buy. Instead, you’re invited to get a notification about when it’s available. We’re in uncharted waters here because why would you launch a phone that no one can buy?

This looks to be a last-minute decision, perhaps meaning that it was too late to stop the launch of the device and give Google time to resolve the problem. So what exactly is the issue?

That’s something of a mystery too, with the company confirming to 9to5Google that the delay was because of a quality control issue. Google is reported to have said: “We’re checking on a component quality issue that’s affecting a small number of Pixel 9a devices.”

Exactly what that component issue is remains to be seen, but we’d rather Google corrected it before it went on sale – so that’s a good reason for delaying the availability of this new phone.

Why the Pixel 9a has me excited

I’ve long been a fan of the Pixel "a" series devices and I felt (until the launch of the iPhone 16e), that Google was serving this segment of the market better than the Apple iPhone SE was. Both have taken a similar approach, offering plenty of power, but I like the fact the Google offered a fresh design for each device with annual launches, something that Apple didn’t do with the SE.

The Pixel 9a should offer an experience that’s close to the Pixel 9 as it uses the same core hardware, the Tensor G4, and while that’s not as powerful as the latest Qualcomm chips (or Apple’s iPhone hardware), I’ve found it to tick along nicely in the Pixel 9 Pro that I use. That’s going to come with all the AI tricks that Google offers, with Gemini on hand and those exciting photo editing features.

But, it’s the camera where the Pixel A series shines and I’d expect that to be the case for the Pixel 9a. With a new main camera, supported by an ultrawide camera, it’s the processing of these images that makes Pixel stand out.

Google has been good at offering cloud-based processing of images, so it’s not entirely dependent on the phone’s physical hardware, and has often rolled new features back to older phones – including A series devices.

I’d expect the Pixel 9a to emerge as the best cheap phone for photography. Fingers crossed then that it’s not a camera issue that’s holding things up.