I went to buy a Google Pixel 3a. T-Mobile tried to put me off

It sounded like a revolution.

Well, a little one. Like suddenly eating oatmeal at breakfast instead of a Starbucks Double Bacon sandwich.

The Google Pixel 3a seemed to offer an interesting mix of cool phones and (relatively) reasonable prices.

Indeed, my colleague Jason Cipriani was very seduced by his big sister, relatively inexpensive, named Pixel 3a XL.

Pixel phones have generally been the domain of Verizon. Indeed, it was not so long ago, a Verizon salesman gave me a clever reason to buy the Pixel 3: it is not an iPhone.

Now, however, you can browse a Pixel at, among others, T-Mobile. So I went to one of his best stores to see how it was sold.

The two reasons to buy a pixel 3a, apparently.

I've always found that T-Mobile stores were filled with an extremely cheerful and relaxed staff.

In this case, a saleswoman was only too happy to guide me to the Pixel 3a display.

The phone was locked and handcuffed.

"May I pick it up?" I asked. "I promise not to steal it."

The engaging saleswoman was happy to help and I managed to get at least some of my hand around it. It is always difficult in the phone shops to feel the sensation of a phone attached to a large cable, via a bulbous bulge at the back of the phone.

Still, the Pixel 3a seemed lighter than my iPhone XR and seemed slightly thinner.

"So why should I buy this phone?" I pushed it.

"Two things," says the saleswoman. "The camera and the memory."

It was not quite the couple I expected, but I was not going to interrupt you.

"The camera is identical to that of the Pixel, more expensive," continued the saleswoman. "He really takes good pictures."

I had heard that and I believed it. Well almost. This Pixel 3a camera has Night Sight and it's a pretty sophisticated thing.

I was however a little more intrigued by the memory aspect. It was not something I had often heard as an incentive.

"With iPhones, if you get 32 ​​gigs or something else, that's all." With my Android, I can insert a new SSD card and get, for example, 256 gigs. "

Ah OK.

Then a twist.

She took out her Galaxy S9 and began to tell me how much she loved him.

But wait, I came here to ask about Pixel 3a.

I am always fascinated by the frequency with which phone shop sellers insist that the phone they have themselves be the best.

This saleswoman, however, possessed objectivity.

"If you have an iPhone now, you should not get one of those pixels," she said. "I had so many people who tried Android for a few days, and then came to tell me," I do not like that. "Or, I can not make it work."

Yes, but why is it so cheap?

Yet she could not say enough about her wonderful S9.

One of the main reasons she liked it? The headphone jack. She has Samsung Buds, but they are often short of resources. She takes out her headphones and uses the music to motivate her to clean or clean.

"So, does this Pixel 3a have a headphone jack?" I was wondering.

"No, it does not work."

I looked at the phone and concluded that it was probably the case. Which led me to wonder if T-Mobile had really trained its staff for this new phone and for some of the other phones.

This is not to criticize this saleswoman. She was an extremely pleasant company. Obviously, she was not completely familiar with the phone. She had trouble finding Chrome on the home screen. She also suggested that her processor was identical to that of her S9, which did not seem quite right. (My specs experts tell me we're talking 2.0 GHz versus 2.7, whatever that means.)

It has, however, managed to avoid some of the disadvantages of Pixels 3a, such as the lack of water resistance and wireless charging.

"Why is it so cheap, if it's such a good phone?" I asked.

She watched me and shrugged.

"It may be because it's a smaller brand and they want more people to buy it," she said. "They probably bought a lot of Samsung parts anyway." She then added that it was actually better than my iPhone XR because the Pixel 3a has an OLED screen, while the XR has only a simple LCD.

Still, I did not quite buy his tone. I could say that she liked Samsung and that she wanted to sell one to me.

For my part, I found the Pixel 3a as a breath of fresh air, in that it was cheap but could pretty much pass for something that costs at least a little more.

I admit that there is one thing about it that says cheap. It's something I never thought I'd say.

Pixel 3a has no guts, the element that was once considered a plague for the firmament and now means more cameras and sensors than behind the goal in a World Cup final.

At $ 399, this phone surely has a chance to attract a new market, but in one way or another this saleswoman did not seem to sell herself.

She accepted my relative enthusiasm and suggested a package that would cost me about $ 100 a month, including $ 16.68 for the phone.

I said that I would think about it.

But, as if she realized that she had not yet made the sale, she tried another blow.

As I was going out, she shouted, "We also have a cable."