After a short delay, Google has announced when customers can get their hands on the new Pixel 9a smartphone.
“The Pixel 9a is coming soon!” the Google Support site explains. “Powered by our fastest, most efficient chip yet, Google Tensor G4, Pixel 9a comes with everything you expect from our Pixel 9 series–complete with a sleek redesign, upgraded main camera and Gemini built in.”
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Of course, we’ve known that since March 19, when Google first announced the Pixel 9a. What we didn’t learn, until today, was exactly when the new smartphone would be made available for purchase by customers. Apparently, there was a last minute component quality issue that delayed this announcement. Which Google has now confirmed.
“A passive component in Pixel 9a didn’t meet our rigorous quality standards for device longevity and rather than ship it, we made the difficult decision to delay the on-shelf availability and take corrective action on the small number of affected units,” the online giant explained in a statement.
Anyway, here are the availability dates.
- April 10: U.S., Canada, and UK: April 10
- April 14: Austria, Belgium, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.
- April 16: Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan
- Coming soon: Japan
What’s curious is that the Google Store hasn’t opened up for preorders yet. And that means I can’t confirm the price of an upgraded Pixel 9a. We know that the base model with 128 GB of storage is $499, but it’s unclear how much the 256 GB versions will cost. I assume $599, based on Google’s other Pixel phones. But that’s just an educated guess.
