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My Sony Xperia XA2 cellphone worked well for me for two years. But it doesn't do 5G, and neither does it do advanced 4G (LTE) stuff like VoLTE (voice over LTE); rather, voice is on 3G (HSPA etc). My carrier, T-Mobile in Los Angeles, is at last rolling out 5G, and it's getting the spectrum to do this by cannibalizing 2G and 3G. This means that the Xperia XA2 is going to be unable to do voice starting 2022-07-01. Therefore I need a new pocket computer.
I replaced it with a Google Pixel 5a barbet
, running LineageOS-19
based on Android-12L Strudel
, the latest version. See the
selection page. This phone does 5G and 4G (LTE) with VoLTE, compatible
with what T-Mobile will be providing. So far it's been performing well.
It has a nice display in cellphone size (not phablet): AMOLED, 1080x2340px, 157mm diagonal. The display is completely normal in direct sunlight, except for the reflection of the blue sky on the screen.
It is frugal in energy use, even more than the already excellent Xperia XA2. See the battery section of the checkout page for details. With my usage a charge lasts more than 2 days, though other people, or myself on vacation taking and editing lots of photos, would need daily charging.
It has two rear cameras, 119° wide angle and 77° normal
field of view, and a 83° front camera. So far they have performed well.
When I first got the Barbet only the stock camera app could use the wide angle
camera, but after about 6 weeks there was an update to
Open Camera which duplicated the special
API for it, so now in LOS I can use the wide angle camera.
The Google Pixel product line chassis are named after fish, and the Pixel 5
is called the redfin
. The Pixel 5a follows that theme: barbet
is a fragment of rouget barbet
(French), or red mullet
(English).
Here is more information about the Google Pixel 5a.
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