How does it compare to the OG Pixel or the Nexus 5?
Wider (left-to-right) by a millimeter or two.
Double the RAM.
More storage capacity.
Two quad-core CPUs which are each somewhat slower (2.0GHz + 1.7GHz) than the N5's one (also quad-core) CPU (2.26 GHz). I'm vaguely curious what the difference is between "one quad-core CPU" and "two 2-core CPUs".
I missed my Nexus 5 so badly since it failed catastrophically and Google shut down the product line. This seems like a return to form, hopefully.
The internal speaker was a notable weakness of the Nexus 5 for things like playing music; no idea whether the 3a is better or worse.
If it’s faster than the 821 in the Original Pixel I’m probably sold...if it’s equivalent I might just have to get the Pixel 1 for cheap.
Pixel 3a: quad-core 2.0GHz + quad-core 1.7 Ghz
If you're doing 8 different things, probably better? Based purely on clock speed, it looks like the original Pixel is slower than the N5. Based on speed and core count... it still looks like that. It seems kind of hard to believe, though.
Anecdotally, I replaced my N5 (4x 2.26 GHz) with a OnePlus 3 (2x 2.2 GHz + 2x 1.6 GHz) and I was impressed by how the OnePlus 3 seemed smoother and faster compared to the N5. Possibly the difference was more based on RAM (2GB for the N5, 6GB for the OnePlus 3).
I have no experience with the Pixel. I picked up a cheap one with the intention of installing LineageOS when they announced support for it... but it seems the Pixel's USB port has some kind of problem that prevents my computer from recognizing it. So it's just been sitting around, unused.