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Google Pixel 3a XL? They couldn't think of a worse name?

Phone names used to be simple. Google seems to have given up on that.
Written by Chris Matyszczyk, Contributing Writer
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Has Google stopped trying?

It's given up, hasn't it?

After Apple's debacle of giving its latest phones entirely confusing and pointless names -- something Cupertino happily admitted -- Google is now drifting inexorably down the same path.

9to5Google revealed this week that Google will be releasing slightly cheaper versions of its fascinating but recondite Pixel range.

One will, apparently, enjoy a 5.6-inch display, the other a 6 inch. Both will vie for the least enjoyable and memorable names in phone history.

It seems that these two phones will be called Google Pixel 3a and Google Pixel 3a XL.

Those sound less like phone names and more like phrases from a patent application.

Please imagine that you're sitting at a swanky bar. You're on an online date. You want to show that you're not too flash, just the right side of sensible. 

You put your phone down on the bar. Your date arrives and wonders, wide-eyed, what this new phone is.

You've already had a cocktail -- alright, two -- just to steady your nerves. And now you have to enunciate "Google Pixel 3a XL"?

I understand that with the proliferation of phones, it isn't always easy to find a new name, one that can be easily owned.

I fear, though, that phone manufacturers can't be bothered anymore and are allowing the nearest nerd intern to concoct a new name via a painful computer program. Or an app they've created themselves.

It's true that Google Pixel 3a XL might not be the very, very worst name ever created.

That would, at least in my own memory, go to the LG G7 ThinQ.

How many people, though, will wander online or into a store and demand a Google Pixel 3a XL?

Wouldn't it be a marginal spiritual uplift if these phones had names that were slightly more personal?

Wouldn't you rather buy a Google Betty, a Google Manfred, or even a Google Pixellator?

Or is this just another tiny step in getting humans to think like computers?

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