Hi Pixel 8 and 8 pro users, how has your experience with the new line of phones been so far? I’m still rocking a pixel 6 pro, and don’t intend on upgrading this year; however, as a pixel nerd, I am curious about how the new phone is holding up? Has there been any noticeable improvements or compromises compared to your last device? Most importantly are you still enjoying it?
Pixel 8 Pro 265Gb here. My first Pixel, my last Google device was a Nexus.
Right now, it’s a love/hate relationship:
I love the camera, display, software, haptic feedback, build, design, sound, call quality (seriously, I can use speakerphone without the other side even noticing that I’m doing so, wow!) and the face unlock during the day - when it’s bright enough, it’s almost magical. All really, really great things.
I’m fine with the performance (coming from an older Snapdragon 865 it surprisingly doesn’t feel like a notable uplift, but it’s good enough, and the most demanding game I play mobile is the NYT crossword), the fingerprint scanner is a little worse than on my old Xiaomi/Poco midranger and, I believe/hope, currently hampered by a bug where it doesn’t reliably trigger from AOD, which probably is the reason why it’s only just “ok” for me overall. Battery life on wifi is fine, albeit surprisingly a bit worse than on my three-year-old phone with its 4700mAh and identically sized display. Reception is fine, no complaints there.
I’m a bit miffed that some of the more interesting AI features are US-only, but what is there in the EU is still mostly nice and useful. Bluetooth is a bit weak, I had some connection issues with my Sony in-ears that I never had before.
I hate, hate, hate the battery life on mobile, especially on 5g. It’s utterly, embarrassingly, awful. How the fuck is it so much worse than on my three-year-old cheap-o phone with its far smaller and slowly dying battery - on the same carrier/5g? Why does it constantly feel warm when on 5g? There’s no way I can use this phone away from charger and wifi for a whole day.
So, yeah, best phone I ever had on wifi. A pretty, but useless, paperweight after a slightly longer day out on mobile. And it’s hard to comprehend why it’s so awful for me, I feel like there must be some kind of explanation or bug.
Literally the only issue I’m having with the phone, but if there’s no solution to this, it may turn out to be a dealbreaker.
The good things you mentioned are great to hear! For some reason, the call quality somewhat lacked on my Pixel 5 and is just alright on my P6P.
Yeah being from AUS, I’m actually not too sure if I am missing some AI features. Which ones are you missing? Nonetheless, fingers crossed they reach all users sooner rather than later!
I am also the same with my phone’s battery struggling when it is using mobile data compared to wifi. I’m hoping for your sake that it is just an optimisation issue and that it gets fixed over time. Especially as Google had mentioned the P8 was meant to be a more efficient product.
I just came back from a children’s birthday party. Naturally, I made sure to charge the phone as much as possible on the drive to the indoor playground. I took and sent a sizable number of pictures and videos, and played some Spotify over the car system on the way home. Nothing else, not even navigation.
5.5h on mobile, 1.5h total SoT - the battery went from 92% to 29% during that time. This is a great “half-a-day” phone, but, sadly, useless for any significantly longer outings.
Most of the call-related AI features:
“Hold for Me” being the most painfully absent.
That call center menu navigation AI thing is missing (but that’s rarely supported even in the US).
No Google Duplex at all.
No improved Call Screen Assistant at all, it’s still that extremely robotic sounding, first generation one.
No “summarize this” feature for websites, either. That was one of the big, new, introductions.
Honestly, that’s pretty much half of the on-device AI features. The rest is the cloud-based photo magic stuff that isn’t run on the phone’s chip at all, that works and can be really cool (but is painfully slow and often quite buggy).
I don’t expect most of these to make it out of the US / to the EU anytime soon, and I’m willing to bet that I won’t see “Assistant with Bard” for a very, very long time.
I’ve heard you can get better battery life by turning off 5G, but I haven’t tried it myself.
Paying over $1000 for a 4G phone… gotta think about that one