The Pixel 9a Is The Smart Way To Do A Slim Phone, The Galaxy S25 Edge Is Not

For whatever reason, the hottest trend in smartphones right now is that they need to be slim. Samsung continues to slowly tease its razor-thin Galaxy S25 Edge, and Apple is widely expected to release its Air-ified iPhone the next time its flagship lineup comes around. Now, even Google is getting in on the action with a revamped and barely recognizable Pixel 9a that ditches the camera bar for the first time since the Pixel 5a arrived. Usually, I think I’d hate that a Pixel is giving up one of its most identifiable features, but I’m actually on board with the pivot for the Pixel 9a, and here’s why.

Thin as a feature? Or thin as a perk?

Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority

As I see it, Google and Samsung have taken two very different approaches to creating new, thinner phones. On Samsung’s side, the thinness is the entire point — they’re not calling it the Galaxy S25 Edge for nothing. The idea — at least as far as we know it — is to make a phone that’s as thin as possible yet remains as powerful as possible for those users who want to show off the latest hardware that Samsung offers.

In some ways, I guess that’s kind of cool. I’m looking forward to the first time I get to hold the Galaxy S25 Edge in my hand to feel what a two-camera Samsung design is like and to see what sacrifices have been made to trim precious millimeters from the frame. However, Samsung’s design makes me nervous for the same reasons. Choosing to prioritize thinness to such an extent almost certainly means that Samsung has had to cut down on the battery capacity and slim its cooling hardware, which might make life tricky for the power-hungry Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy that’s almost certainly under the hood.

Samsung slimmed down the Galaxy S25 Edge to prove a point, Google slimmed down the Pixel 9a because it found the space.

The redesigned Pixel 9a, on the other hand, takes pretty much the opposite approach. It checks off all the other boxes the Pixel team wanted and then trims off the camera bar because there’s extra space in Google’s cleverly designed chassis. This isn’t just marketing speak, either — we asked Google what happened to the camera bar during one of our briefings on the new mid-ranger.

The team responded that it wanted to ease battery anxiety for Pixel 9a users. This meant increasing the battery capacity by 500mAh, expanding the cooling setup inside the phone, and switching to a new, thinner pOLED panel for the display. As I see it, that last point is the most important, as it meant the display no longer had to push as far back into the phone, thus allowing the wide and ultrawide cameras to sit a little deeper and eliminating the camera bar altogether.

To me, that’s how the decision to slim down a phone should be made. If you’ve checked off all the other boxes you wanted and still have space to shrink things a bit, go for it. Nobody is going to sit here and say that you’re getting less Pixel 9a for your money when, in fact, you’re getting more — save for a few megapixels from the primary camera.

I’ll miss the camera bar, but this Pixel still has personality

Lanh Nguyen / Android Authority

Although I might come across as very pro-Pixel 9a at this point, I haven’t been that way for long. In fact, when I saw the first few leaks of Google’s latest mid-ranger, I jumped right into one of Android Authority’s many Slack channels to fire off my complaints. In my head, Google was following the lead that Samsung established with its Galaxy S flagships, trimming out identifiable things like the camera bump and relying on software wrinkles to keep things interesting.

Since then, though, I’ve come around. Even though the pill-shaped camera cutout isn’t as recognizable as the camera bar was, it’s still more interesting than simple circles, and the horizontal layout makes the Pixel 9a unmistakably Google. Besides, while Samsung was busy condensing its color options into shades of blue and silver, Google was thinking about spring with new Iris and Peony finishes. I don’t know what it is, but something about a bright purple Pixel feels right — camera bar or not.

Maybe I’ll come around in a similar way to Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge when it eventually launches, but I’m not holding my breath. At a glance, its two vertically stacked camera sensors look an awful lot like an iPhone 16, and I’m sure that blue — the color of AI, according to Samsung — is the most exciting finish it will get. I suppose I’ll be happy as long as it doesn’t have the same sharp edges as the Galaxy S25 Ultra, but I’m not sure that Samsung’s battery and camera tradeoffs will be worth it.