Google’s budget Pixel 3a XL pops up at an Ohio Best Buy

Published May 3, 2019

The Pixel 3a is arriving next week at Google I/O. That statement felt like all but a given before, and now that the handset is showing up at Ohio-area Best Buys, well, you can pretty much bank on it at this point.

Google’s budget take on its Pixel flagship is expected to take the stage during the May 7 keynote at Mountain View. Meantime, we’ve got another pretty good look at the thing courtesy of an Android Police reader who spotted boxes at a Springfield store.

The shots confirm Google’s strict adherence to silly color naming conventions, with the appearance of “Purple-ish” alongside “Just Black.” The former is a new color and looks to be about as subtle as you can get with a purple piece of electronics. Other side-of-the-box specs confirm what we’ve seen so far, including a 6-inch display on the XL version, coupled with 64GB of storage.

The handsets arrive just six or so months after the release of the Pixel 3. The company addressed the flagship device’s poor sales on this week’s earnings call, noting, among other things, that it had some hardware planned for I/O, marking a break from past years. It will be interesting to see how Google positions the product, as it continues to make software, AI and ML the focus of upgrades over hardware specs.

More info on what to expect next week in Mountain View can be found here.