Phones seem to be the only piece of tech growing more expensive as the years go by. Well, solid state storage and GPUs, too, but that’s a blip caused by tariffs and AI-industry-induced parts shortages. But phones are damn expensive, right? Even dumbphones…

For those on a budget, one of the premier mid-range Android smartphones of 2026, the Google Pixel 10a, is on sale for $449. The phone only just came out last month, and its retail price was already fairly budget at $500.

a solid budget android

Given that the Pixel 10a only just released to the public on March 5, 2026, I’d say that you’re safe in springing for one today without having to worry that the inevitable Pixel 11a will land on the market and make it obsolete overnight. We don’t even have credible rumors on the Pixel 11a’s launch date yet.

Keep in mind that the “a” suffix on Pixels denotes a more affordable version of its parent phone with correspondingly lower specs. So the Pixel 10a is a budget version of the Pixel 10, which normally sells for $799 (and is also on sale for $549). There are murmurings of a Pixel 11 launch later this summer, but Google’s parent phones always launch well ahead of their “a” series versions, so the Pixel 11a is roughly a year away, judging from past release cycles.

This $449 deal is for the 128 GB base-level version. That’s not a lot of storage. It’s not unusably small, but if you like to load up your phone with hundreds of apps or take lots of photos and videos, you’re going to feel the constraints of that 128 GB if you don’t overload them regularly.

Following the same links in our product cards, though, you can also find the 256 GB version on sale for $549, which is also $50 off its normal retail price. With 256 GB of storage, you can afford to be a little sloppier with your photo and video offloading habits.