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Pixel 9a review: Google’s cut-price Android winner | Pixel

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Google’s latest cut-price Pixel offers the best bang for your buck in Android phones and is arguably better in many areas than some models costing twice the price.

The Pixel 9a starts at the same £499 (€549/$499/A$849) as last year’s equally good value model. That makes it £300 or so less than Google’s regular Pixel 9 and places it up against mid-rangers such as Nothing’s Phone 3a Pro and Samsung’s Galaxy A56.

Google has stuck with its tried and tested A-series formula, packing the 9a with top-level specs, chips and cameras, cutting a few corners to bring the price down. The result is an extremely compelling package for the money.

The 9a looks just like the regular Pixel 9 from the front, with an optical fingerprint reader under the screen and facial recognition for unlocking the phone and apps. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

The 6.3in OLED screen is crisp, smooth and bright, looking better than many rivals costing far more. It has slightly thicker bezels around the edge than the Pixel 9, but keeps the premium-feeling aluminium band around the outside. The back is high-quality plastic rather than glass, but it’s difficult to tell unless you know. The 9a has full IP68 water resistance, too, matching the best in the business.

The big change is that the standout camera bar on the back is gone. Instead, the twin cameras sit almost flush poking through a small black oval. It means the phone sits flat on a desk and is a little sleeker, but it has also lost some of its charm looking far more generic than the rest of Google’s phone designs.

Specifications

  • Screen: 6.3in 120Hz FHD+ OLED (422ppi)

  • Processor: Google Tensor G4

  • RAM: 8GB

  • Storage: 128 or 256GB

  • Operating system: Android 15

  • Camera: 48MP + 13MP ultrawide, 13MP selfie

  • Connectivity: 5G, Sim/eSim, wifi 6E, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSS

  • Water resistance: IP68 (1m for 30 minutes)

  • Dimensions: 154.7 x 73.3 x 8.9mm

  • Weight: 185.9g

Tensor G4 and most of Google’s AI

It takes just under 90 minutes to fully charge the 9a, hitting 85% in an hour using a 23W or greater USB-C charger (not included). The phone also has 7.5W wireless charging. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Inside, the 9a has the same top-tier Google Tensor G4 chip as the rest of the Pixel 9 line but with only 8GB of RAM rather than 12GB on the more expensive models. The chip is fast and performance is snappy. It won’t win any raw performance awards but is markedly faster than most mid-range chips and played games just fine.

The battery also lasts a long time: up to 57 hours between charges with general light use, including actively using the screen for nine hours and spending five hours on 5G. That is the longest of all the Google Pixels and means it should see out two days, rivalling some of the longest-lasting handsets on the market.

You likely won’t notice the smaller amount of RAM compared with the Pixel 9 in daily use, but it limits some of the potential for running Google’s AI systems locally on the phone. The 9a has to make do with a smaller version of Google’s Gemini AI tools that can only process text on-device, precluding some of the fancy audio or image-based tools such as the popular Pixel Screenshots and Call Notes apps from the Pixel 9.

Gemini has replaced Google Assistant as the AI assistant on the Pixel phones, which works just as well on the 9a as other models. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

All the Gemini features that use the web to process things, such as Gemini Live, work great. As do the various photo editing and image generation tools. The 9a can also produce summaries of voice recordings, but only those under about 15 minutes as there is a maximum number of words it can process in one go.

The rest of the Android 15 experience matches the other Pixel phones, which makes it one of the best in the business. Even better at this price is Google’s seven years of software support for its Pixels, which means you can safely use the 9a for far longer than most in the mid-range market.

Camera

The Pixel camera app offers most of the tools you’ll need and makes it easy to shoot great photos with very little effort. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Google’s Pixels have some of the very best cameras, which includes the 9a. It has a new main 48-megapixel camera twinned with a 13MP ultrawide, which matches that from last year’s model.

The main camera is capable of shooting better photos than many full-price flagship phones, and is only a smidgen behind the regular Pixel 9 in low-light scenarios, taking longer to get the shot. Photos across a range of lighting conditions are full of detail and well balanced, while the ultrawide continues to be one of the better options available. The main camera offers a solid 2x zoom that can stretch up to 8x with more obvious digital artefacts.

New for the 9a is a macrophotography mode that uses the main camera and can produce some great shots, though sometimes it struggles to focus and is only sharp in the centre of the image. The selfie camera is solid on the front, while video capture is equally good.

The 9a has popular Best Take and Add Me AI features from the main Pixel 9, as well as various AI editing tools in Google Photos including Magic Editor, unblur and audio magic eraser.

Sustainability

The back of the phone is made from recycled plastic with a smooth mat finish. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

Google says the battery should last about 1,000 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. The phone is repairable by Google and third-party shops with genuine replacement parts available direct from iFixit.

The Pixel 9a is made with recycled aluminium, glass, plastic and tin, accounting for at least 23% of the phone by weight. The company publishes an environmental impact report for the phone and will recycle old devices free of charge.

Price

The Google Pixel 9a costs £499 (€549/$499/A$849).

For comparison, the Pixel 9 costs £799, the Samsung Galaxy A56 costs £499, the Nothing Phone 3a Pro costs £449 and the Apple iPhone 16e costs £599.

Verdict

The Pixel 9a shows Google knows how to make a cut-price flagship phone at a mid-range price better than any other.

The combination of top-tier chip, long battery life, great screen and a class-leading camera beats phones costing a lot more. Google’s quality software and long seven years of support only sweeten the deal.

A few corners have been cut to bring the price down, but they aren’t noticeable in day-to-day usage. Missing things such as a lack of wifi 7, satellite messaging or spatial audio, or the use of a plastic back can all be forgiven at this price.

While more expensive Pixel phones offer a few more bells and whistles, it’s hard to overlook the Pixel 9a. It is the best mid-range phone by a wide margin and is the handset to buy for anyone looking for a quality experience that goes the distance for less.

Pros: seven years of software updates, class-leading camera, great screen, top-tier chip, very long battery life, recycled materials, good AI features, undercuts high-end phones on price.

Cons: design quite generic, no optical zoom for camera, raw performance short of best, plastic back, no built-in spatial audio, no wifi 7 or satellite messaging, older Gorilla Glass 3.

The Pixel 9a offers a quality Android experience for less. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs/The Guardian

This article was amended on 9 May 2025. An earlier version listed the height of the phone as 157.7mm.



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IAB Europe unveils framework for AI publisher compensation

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According to IAB Europe Data Analyst Dimitris Beis, the framework addresses “a paradigm of publisher remuneration for content ingestion” through three core mechanisms: content access controls, discovery protocols, and monetization APIs. The 11-page document establishes technical specifications for AI platforms accessing publisher content.

The framework emerges from documented traffic disruptions affecting digital publishers. According to Similarweb data cited in the report, referrals from AI platforms increased 357% year-over-year in June 2025, reaching 1.13 billion visits compared to 191 billion visits from organic Google search. However, news and media sectors experienced 770% traffic growth from AI platforms during the same period.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince, speaking at a Cannes event, described shifting economics in content crawling. According to the framework, Prince reported the ratio of pages crawled to visitors referred increased from 2:1 a decade ago to 6:1 at the beginning of 2025 and 18:1 in June. OpenAI’s ratio reportedly grew from 250:1 to 1,250:1 during this timeframe.

The framework contradicts Google’s August rebuttal claiming stable year-over-year referrals from organic search. According to Chartbeat research covering 565 US and UK news websites, search referral consistency has been maintained over the past year. Google acknowledged certain query types may not generate clicks, similar to previous features like sports scores.

Adobe research conducted between July 2024 and February 2025 revealed AI-referred visitors stayed 8% longer on sites, viewed 12% more pages, and showed 23% lower bounce rates. However, these visitors lagged 9% behind non-AI-referred users in conversion rates.

The IAB framework proposes blocking unauthorised scraping through robots.txt files and Web Application Firewall methods. According to the document, unauthorised scraping increased 40% from Q3 to Q4 2024, with robots.txt compliance declining significantly.

Three content discovery mechanisms form the framework’s second component. Publishers would implement content access rules pages containing usage terms, scraper instructions, contact information, and content metadata. JSON-based content metadata would provide site summaries and IAB content taxonomy mappings. An llms.txt markdown file would contain information digestible by large language models.

The monetization component introduces Cost-per-crawl (CPCr) APIs featuring tiered pricing based on content type, bot classification, and access frequency. According to the framework, a more sophisticated LLM ingest content API would support per-query pricing through bid-response exchanges, enabling real-time content valuation.

The per-query model addresses retrieval-augmented generation, where AI platforms query publisher content directly rather than using pre-trained datasets. According to the document, this approach “more closely tracks value extracted from using publisher content and facilitates a fairer deal than cost-per-crawl.”

The framework identifies three implementation challenges. Controlling content access requires commitment from AI operators beyond technical measures, as multiple investigations suggest robots.txt compliance varies significantly. Auction dynamics differ from advertising markets, with single AI operators typically bidding rather than multiple competing buyers.

Content valuation presents complexity in determining marginal benefits of additional content for LLM responses. According to the framework, pricing decisions become probabilistic when based solely on metadata, potentially requiring verification mechanisms before content licensing.

Alternative models include revenue-sharing subscriptions, where Perplexity distributes 80% of user fees to participating publishers based on engagement metrics. Bilateral licensing agreements between major publishers and AI platforms provide direct compensation but concentrate benefits among large content creators.

Collective licensing schemes, similar to music rights societies, would create central compensation pools distributed according to usage measurements. According to the framework, this model requires regulatory action and allocation consensus.

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The framework establishes three requirements for viable compensation models. Effective content access control must reliably block unauthorised scraping. Purpose-limited use assurance prevents single-query content from training dataset repurposing. Transparency in pricing and trade-offs provides publishers visibility into content usage and valuation.

Current conditions fail to meet these requirements. According to the document, unauthorised scraping continues rising as the root cause of publisher concerns. Most publishers lack visibility into content usage after access, with only large publishers securing protections through bespoke AI operator agreements.

Cloudflare recently introduced AI crawler blocking capabilities and piloting systems where AI platforms declare content access purposes while publishers control permissions. According to the framework, the company develops signed requests and mTLS technologies for strengthening crawler identification.

IAB Tech Lab CEO Tony Katsur has advocated for regulatory intervention, urging publishers to advocate for their interests. According to the document, structural solutions enforcing access control, transparency, and verifiable usage represent prerequisites before remuneration models can function at scale.

The marketing community faces significant implications from these developments. Publishers experiencing declining traffic revenues must evaluate alternative monetization strategies beyond traditional advertising models. AI-powered search features reduce click-through rates while maintaining content dependency for training and inference processes.

Campaign strategies may require adaptation as zero-click searches increase and publisher content appears in AI summaries without corresponding traffic. Performance measurement frameworks need updating to account for content usage in AI responses rather than website visit metrics.

The framework represents industrywide momentum toward formalised compensation structures. According to the document, remuneration models likely diverge rather than converge on single mechanisms, with publishers anticipating patchwork approaches depending on market position and jurisdiction.

IAB Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Working Group seeks European publisher collaboration. The working group can be contacted through Dimitris Beis at beis [at] iabeurope [dot] eu for participation information.

Timeline

Summary

Who: IAB Europe Data Analyst Dimitris Beis authored the framework. The initiative involves publishers, AI platforms, and the IAB Tech Lab working group seeking European publisher collaboration.

What: A technical framework establishing three mechanisms for AI platform compensation to publishers: content access controls, discovery protocols, and monetization APIs including Cost-per-crawl and LLM ingest content APIs.

When: Published in September 2025, following industry discussions throughout 2025 including the July IAB Tech Lab summit and August working group launch.

Where: The framework applies globally but emphasises European implementation through IAB Europe’s Artificial Intelligence Working Group collaboration with European publishers.

Why: Addresses declining publisher revenues from increased AI content scraping (357% growth year-over-year) and zero-click searches (rising from 56% to 69% in May 2025) while establishing fair compensation for content used in AI training and inference.



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Planned artificial intelligence centers strain energy grid – El Paso Inc.

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Planned artificial intelligence centers strain energy grid  El Paso Inc.



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Vikings vs. Falcons props, picks, SportsLine Machine Learning Model AI predictions: Robinson over 65.5 rushing

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Week 2 of Sunday Night Football will see the Minnesota Vikings (1-0) hosting the Atlanta Falcons (0-1). J.J. McCarthy and Michael Penix Jr. will be popular in NFL props, as the two will face off for the first time since squaring off in the 2023 CFP National Title Game. The cast of characters around them has changed since McCarthy and Michigan prevailed over Washington, as the likes of Bijan Robinson, Justin Jefferson, Drake London and T.J. Hockenson now flank the quarterbacks. There are several NFL player props one could target for these star players, or you may find value in going after under-the-radar options.

Tyler Allgeier had 10 carries in Week 1, which were just two fewer than Robinson, with the latter being more involved in the passing game with six receptions. If Allgeier has a similar type of volume going forward, then the over for his rushing yards NFL prop may be one to consider. A strong run game would certainly help out a young quarterback like Penix, so both Allgeier and Robinson have intriguing Sunday Night Football props. Before betting any Falcons vs. Vikings props for Sunday Night Football, you need to see the Vikings vs. Falcons prop predictions powered by SportsLine’s Machine Learning Model AI.

Built using cutting-edge artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques by SportsLine’s Data Science team, AI Predictions and AI Ratings are generated for each player prop. 

For Falcons vs. Vikings NFL betting on Sunday Night Football, the Machine Learning Model has evaluated the NFL player prop odds and provided Vikings vs. Falcons prop picks. You can only see the Machine Learning Model player prop predictions for Atlanta vs. Minnesota here.

Top NFL player prop bets for Falcons vs. Vikings

After analyzing the Vikings vs. Falcons props and examining the dozens of NFL player prop markets, the SportsLine’s Machine Learning Model says Falcons RB Bijan Robinson goes Over 65.5 rushing yards (-114 at FanDuel). Robinson ran for 92 yards and a touchdown in Week 14 of last season versus Minnesota, despite the Vikings having the league’s No. 2 run defense a year ago. After replacing their entire starting defensive line in the offseason, it doesn’t appear the Vikings are as stout on the ground. They allowed 119 rushing yards in Week 1, which is more than they gave up in all but four games a year ago.

Robinson is coming off a season with 1,454 rushing yards, which ranked third in the NFL. He averaged 85.6 yards per game, and not only has he eclipsed 65.5 yards in six of his last seven games, but he’s had at least 90 yards on the ground in those six games. Over Minnesota’s last eight games, including the postseason, six different running backs have gone over 65.5 rushing yards, as the SportsLine Machine Learning Model projects Robinson to have 81.8 yards in a 4.5-star prop pick. See more NFL props here, and new users can also target the FanDuel promo code, which offers new users $300 in bonus bets if their first $5 bet wins:

How to make NFL player prop bets for Minnesota vs. Atlanta

In addition, the SportsLine Machine Learning Model says another star sails past his total and has six additional NFL props that are rated four stars or better. You need to see the Machine Learning Model analysis before making any Falcons vs. Vikings prop bets for Sunday Night Football.

Which Vikings vs. Falcons prop bets should you target for Sunday Night Football? Visit SportsLine now to see the top Falcons vs. Vikings props, all from the SportsLine Machine Learning Model.





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