yes and P4a is already one major GOS/Android version behind, it’s only getting “extended legacy support” releases. i.e. security fixes are merged and backported where possible, but it’s overall not the best setup and they recommend to switch asap.
I’m pretty sure GOS will drop Android 13 (and therefore P4a) as soon as they release Android 15, since the team won’t be maintaining three major Android versions.
CalyxOS ported Android 14 to P4a, so you might squeeze an additional year or so out of it if you switch.
I’d either replace the battery in the old P4a, or get a newer model with 7y software support. But buying a new 4a is probably not your best possible move
the camera is amazing, but you need to use the Google Camera app for it to take advantage of all the Pixel magic. 3rd party camera apps will yield lousy shots comparatively.
4a is end of life already, so no firmware updates from Google. GrapheneOS has legacy builds available for it but doesn’t recommend using them, and they might go away anytime soon
get a used device which is still properly supported, don’t buy brand new e-waste
I’ve had to swap Firefox on my laptop for the deb package, the snap took like 5sec to open, whereas the deb opens instantly. Other than that, i don’t see much of a difference, but i run into sandboxing issues quite often (same with flatpak though)