Google's Pixel 9a does one simple thing that could tempt me away from iPhones after a decade

When I hopped on a confidential briefing call with Google a couple of weeks ago to learn about the Pixel 9a, it's fair to say I came away deeply impressed by one key facet: the phone's design. I come from a place of positivity, but I can't pretend that I've loved the whole visor aesthetic of the Pixel lineup over its lifespan.

So, the rumours and leaks suggesting that it could be on its way out for the first time were right, and now that the Pixel 9a is finally public, there's no getting around the fact that it's a big change. Google itself wasn't focusing too much on the new design, preferring to spotlight its AI features, but there's no doubt in my mind that it's the biggest story around the phone.

After all, that new camera bump is the biggest step I can remember any big phone-maker taking in years towards eliminating the camera bump entirely. It protrudes out the back of the phone merely a matter of millimetres, and barely even has a discrete bump to it – rather, only the rounded glass of the lens unit is really there at all.

This means that the Pixel 9a comes as close to lying flat on a surface as any major phone has in years, without needing a case to balance things back out – and I couldn't be more impressed by that tweak. After all, it feels like we're years past the point when phone-makers were still striving for smaller camera bumps at all.

The fact that Google appears to have managed to shrink down that bump without making compromises on the lens involved (compared to the Pixel 8a, principally) is doubly impressive. In fact, it makes me wonder if companies like Apple could come closer to matching it, if the decision were made to simply focus on slimming down the bump above all else.

I've been an iPhone user for over a decade now, despite the occasional swap to review a phone or test a specific Android feature, but I'm not rabid about Apple's phones being unassailably better. Rather, I just haven't ever seen a convincing reason to jump ship, given how Apple's ecosystem has come to underpin much of my working life. Still, a small phone that doesn't rock on the table is a way bigger deal than you might assume, and if Google can double down on this in the next year or two, with the Pixel 10, for instance, it could have me looking very envious.

Interestingly, though, the latest leaks suggest that the Pixel 10 will still sport the visor look, which might mean that this flatter design becomes a staple of the 'a' lineup of more affordable handsets. Given that these cheaper handsets are drastically popular (Google called the Pixel 9a the "core" Pixel 9 handset in my briefing), that could be quite an asset.

Of course, the iPhone 16e also has the smallest camera unit of any iPhone 16 model, but it's still very much a tall bump, and there's not really much of a comparison between its protusion and that of the Pixel 9a. Of course, I'd have to get my hands on the latter phone to actually verify how much of a boon that difference is.

I use an iPhone 15 Pro in my daily life, still one of the best iPhones you can get your hands on, but the camera unit is a little ugly, despite my having got used to it. If I could flatten it, I'd do so in a heartbeat, even if that meant a slight compromise on camera quality. The Pixel 9a is going to spend months living in my head rent free because of its own flatness, but whether it's quite enough to tempt me away isn't something I can answer at this stage.