Introduction
The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro are Google's latest flagship smartphones for 2023. The new phones may seem similar at first glance, but feature a host of changes across the board. These include updated designs, new displays, an improved Tensor G3 chip, updated cameras, and a whole host of AI-enhanced features.
Pixel 8 next to Pixel 8 Pro
Today, we are taking a brief look at both devices, where we will cover things such as the design, display, and performance, along with some camera samples and comparisons with older Pixel devices and the new iPhone 15 Pro. We will have more to cover in a full review later, but for now, let's get on with this preview.
You can compare the two complete specs sheets here.
Design
The Pixel 8 phones may have a seemingly identical design to the Pixel 7 phones but there are several smaller changes here that make a big difference to the way the phones feel.
Pixel 8 Pro next to Pixel 7 Pro
For starters, both phones have a much broader curvature to the sides, which makes them a lot easier to grip. The corners also have a larger radius so the phones dig less into your palms and are more comfortable to hold for longer. The Pixel 8 is also notably smaller than the Pixel 7 in width and height.
Pixel 8
The result of these changes is that the phones feel significantly better in hand, especially the smaller Pixel 8, which feels fantastic. The Pixel 8 Pro is a bit clunky due to its size but nowhere near as much as the Pixel 7 Pro and overall is fairly comfortable to use.
Aesthetically, the new phones do look quite similar to their predecessors. The visor-style camera bar at the back keeps mutating and the camera cutouts keep increasing in size. It's not exactly pretty and lacks the novelty of the original Pixel 6 design, especially since it no longer actually looks like a visor.
Pixel 8 next to Pixel 7
The new designs are also a bit more generic than before and remind of old Galaxy phones. The squared-off design of the previous models definitely looked better even if it wasn't as comfortable. The same goes for the choice of using a flat display on the Pixel 8 Pro, which while functionally superior, does not look as cool as the curved displays on the previous models.
Pixel 8 Pro with a flat display and uniform bezels next to Pixel 7 Pro
The Pixel 8 Pro does mix things up with textures. While the smaller model has a glossy back and matte frame, the Pixel 8 Pro has a matte glass and glossy frame. The glass back has a wonderful satin smooth finish reminiscent of the Pixel 3 phones. It can be quite slippery at times so it's a good thing the side frame is a bit tacky.
That aside, both phones have a high-quality feel to them. They also have IP68 rating so they are protected against dust and water. Having said that, it's not uncommon for Pixel devices to develop some sort of hardware issue shortly after launch. The volume button of our Pixel 7 Pro popped out just a couple of months after getting the phone and ours wasn't even an isolated incident. One would hope there are no such incidents with the Pixel 8 series but Google does not have a great track record for these things.
Display
The displays are where we first start seeing the major differences between the two Pixel 8 phones.
The smaller Pixel 8 has a 6.2-inch, 2400 x 1080 resolution OLED panel with a 20:9 aspect ratio. It can refresh in either 60Hz or 120Hz modes but is set to 60Hz by default. The display has a peak brightness of 1400 nits in HDR mode and 2000 nits absolute peak brightness when outdoors. There is HDR and wide-color support but the panel is only 8-bit. Google calls this screen the Actua display.
Pixel 8 Pro
The Pixel 8 Pro has a 6.7-inch, 2992 x 1344 resolution OLED panel with a 20:9 aspect ratio. It can refresh at either 60Hz or 120Hz but can also drop down 1Hz when the user isn't interacting and there is no moving content on screen. The Pixel 8 Pro does come with 120Hz set out of the box but the resolution is set to 1080p and needs to be changed manually to 1344p if you want the full native resolution. The display has a peak brightness of 1600 nits in HDR mode and an absolute peak brightness of 2400 nits. Once again, there is HDR and wide color support but the panel is 8-bit. Google calls this screen the Super Actua display.
The Pixel 8 Pro has a flat panel compared to the curved displays of the previous two pro models. The glass used on the top is Gorilla Glass Victus 2 whereas the smaller Pixel 8 uses Gorilla Glass Victus. The display on the Pixel 8 Pro has uniform bezels on all four sides whereas the Pixel 8 has slightly thicker bezels on the bottom, although you'd be hard-pressed to notice.
Pixel 8
Both displays have excellent image quality and can get incredibly bright, especially the larger Pixel 8 Pro. HDR content looks great although we wish Google would finally add support for Dolby Vision as it's far more popular than HDR10+. High refresh rate also works well for the most part but it could have been better with more intelligent refresh rate modes that match video content, such as 48Hz or 50Hz. Right now, the display will just drop to 60Hz for all video content.
A bug we had encountered on Pixel 7 devices has been carried over, where if you use the Natural color preset, the display will intermittently switch to wide color whenever the display automatically adjusts its brightness. It happens briefly but is always jarring when the colors suddenly become oversaturated briefly as the brightness changes. Considering it has been around for over a year, it suggests the QA team doesn't seem to test thoroughly in the Natural mode.
Software
The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro ship with Android 14 out of the box with Google's exclusive suite of software features that it reserves for the Pixel devices. The focus this year is unsurprisingly on AI, with most apps getting at least some level of AI enhancement.
Google Photos gets most of the new AI-assisted trickery. The new Audio Magic Eraser feature can automatically remove background noise from your videos while maintaining focus on the subject. That... sounds pretty cool.
But then there is the new Magic Editor, which not only lets you remove background distractions but also move entire subjects around the frame, swap backgrounds, and change the lighting. The final result can look essentially nothing like the original picture, should you so wish.
The Best Take feature goes even further. Take a burst of a group of people and should you not like someone's expression, you can swap their entire face or head with one of your liking. Reality can literally be whatever you want. We could sit here and argue all day about what even is the point of taking candid photos in the moment or visiting specific places at a specific time anymore if you can just change them to whatever you want later with AI-generated versions but perhaps that's a discussion for another day. Everyone is entitled to have their own opinions about this and the features are, after all, optional.
It's worth noting that features like Magic Editor first require you to back up the image to the Google Photos cloud before they work. Also, the new Magic Eraser feature works better on larger distractions and more complex structures but only on the Pixel 8 Pro.
Google also announced two more features for the Pixel 8 series that will be arriving later. One is Video Boost, which uploads your videos to the cloud and processes them further for even greater dynamic range and detail. We can't test this now but the company did compare it against the video from the iPhone 15 Pro Max during the keynote, where the Pixel 8 Pro Video Boost video looked a lot better. Then again, it's hardly fair to compare a locally processed video against one cooked overnight on the cloud and not really the slam dunk Google thinks it is.
The other feature is Assistant with Bard. This is simply Google integrating its AI chatbot with Assistant that works in a way where it can combine data from multiple Google apps on the device to provide relevant results for your queries. This is also something that we cannot test for now.
What we did test is the new temperature sensor and the Temperature app on the Pixel 8 Pro. It lets you pick from a variety of surface types and then point the sensor on the back towards it. The phone needs to be fairly close to the subject to take a reading and for now, does not work with humans or animals as it is awaiting approval. We can't quite vouch for its accuracy but it was fun to check the temperature for things around the house. However, without skin temperature check, the app would quickly become a gimmick, so hopefully, it arrives sooner rather than later in a future update.
Temperature app
Google has also managed to come up with a secure new face unlock feature that works with just the front camera. It allows you to access apps locked behind your phone's device lock to be unlocked with just your face, similar to the iPhone or the Pixel 4. You can still use the fingerprint sensor but if you also add your face data then instead of asking for your fingerprint the phone will just scan your face and unlock the app. We tried this with password manager apps and it worked perfectly. The apps themselves don't need to change and aren't even aware of the new face unlock feature; the device handles everything automatically.
The rest of the software experience is pretty much carried over from the previous Pixel phones. The default Android UI design hasn't changed much recently and it feels like déjà vu every time you pick up a new Pixel phone, something iPhone users are already familiar with. If you upgrade to this from a Pixel 5 or 6, you will feel right at home but also maybe a bit disappointed that things are mostly the same.
Android 14 UI
Google is also lagging behind other Android manufacturers in terms of customizability. Take the launcher for example, which is still very basic. You don't even get the option to move or uninstall multiple apps at once, something even iOS has. Google is also very stuck in its ways of adopting new features and technologies that others have, so things like Dolby Vision, Dolby Atmos, and Bluetooth LHDC are all absent here even though they are quite common on other phones.
But few things compare to how annoying it is to update the software on Pixel phones. Most other Android phones will wrap things up within ten minutes or so but not the Pixels. Every single software update, even minor ones, can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour to install. For most users, this isn't an issue as it's just something that happens in the background but if you care enough about your updates to manually install them, you are going to waste countless hours over the course of owning these devices.
Speaking of updates, Google has promised a rather ambitious seven years of update cycle for the Pixel 8 series. We have no real reason to doubt the company as so far it has kept up with its promised updates for previous Pixel devices. However, seven years is a long time and one has to wonder what the state of the hardware will be in 2030 when the phones get their final update. Will the phones even be usable then remains to be seen and that concerns us more than whether or not Google will follow through with its promise.
Performance
The Pixel 8 devices run on the new Google Tensor G3 chip, which is based on Samsung's 4nm manufacturing process. It features a nona-core design with 1x 3.0GHz Cortex-X3, 4x 2.45GHz Cortex-A715, and 4x 2.15GHz Cortex-A510. The GPU is an Immortalis-G715 MP10.
The Pixel 8 comes with 8GB of LPDDR5X memory and the Pixel 8 Pro comes with 12GB of LPDDR5X, with no further variants. For storage, you get a choice of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1 TB UFS 3.1 on the Pixel 8 Pro and only 128GB and 256GB on the Pixel 8. However, the storage options depend on the region; in India, for example, both phones only come in 128GB configuration, which is laughably small by today's standards, especially on the flagship Pixel 8 Pro.
In terms of synthetic benchmark performance, the Tensor G3 is handily beaten by the latest generation Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, which has double-digit performance gains in every area. And then there is the Apple A17 Pro, which we aren't even going to bother comparing as it's not even in the same class. All you need to know is that even the A14 Bionic was faster than the Tensor G3.
Synthetic benchmarks are one thing but real-world performance is another. Unfortunately, things aren't exactly great here either. The Pixel 8 phones really don't feel any better to use than the Pixel 7 phones, which themselves weren't that great to begin with. The issue still seems to be of optimization, as most third-party apps on Android are optimized for Qualcomm chips, which is why even something like the Nothing Phone (2) with a slightly older chip and similar benchmark scores feels a lot smoother to use.
However, the worst part is that the Pixel 8 phones don't even feel great to use in Google's own apps. Scrolling side by side on the Pixel 8 Pro and the aforementioned Nothing Phone (2) in the Google Play Store, the latter was night and day better with a far smoother and consistent scrolling experience. The Pixel 8 Pro, on the other hand, was very jittery with consistent stutters that never went away no matter how many times the app was opened and loaded. In the Google Photos app, the Nothing Phone (2) also loaded image editing features like Magic Eraser faster than the Pixel 8 Pro and the results looked the same on both.
One could dismiss these as teething issues of new phones but after having lived with the Pixel 7 Pro for a year, we beg to disagree. The experience on that device was much the same, where it would routinely get lapped by Snapdragon devices costing a quarter the amount, often in Google's own apps but also in most other Android apps in general.
Gaming performance also wasn't great. The Pixel 8 Pro struggled to maintain 50fps in Genshin Impact at the highest setting when the newest iPhones can hit 120FPS on similar settings, especially with MetalFX image upscaling that looks indistinguishable from native on a phone's screen. There's also no support for ray tracing so if that's something you care about then you are out of luck here.
At this point, Google's decision to stick with the Samsung-manufactured Tensor chips seems inexcusable. The performance simply isn't there, neither in benchmarks but more importantly, in real-world usage. The phones mostly feel fine in use if you don't mind the jittery scrolling but this is simply not the desired experience of flagship devices. The chip also still runs fairly warm most of the time and while we didn't do battery testing here, we aren't expecting great things.
Camera
The Pixel 8 and the Pixel 8 Pro have revised cameras this year with a dual camera system on the Pixel 8 and a triple camera system on the Pixel 8 Pro.
The main camera on both phones is a new 50MP sensor with f1.68 aperture, multi-zone laser detect auto-focus with optical and electronic image stabilization. The Pixel 8 Pro also gets a new 48MP ultra-wide camera with f1.95 aperture and a 125.5-degree field of view. The Pixel 8, however, seemingly borrows the ultra-wide camera from last year's Pixel 7 Pro, with 12MP resolution and f2.2 aperture.
The Pixel 8 Pro also gets an updated 48MP 5x telephoto camera. It's unclear if it's the same sensor as on the Pixel 7 Pro but the new phone does get a brighter f2.8 aperture and a slightly wider 21.8 degree field of view.
Both new phones also get an updated 10.5MP front camera with f2.2 aperture. Only the Pro model gets autofocus.
Starting with the software, there are some interesting things on the new Pixel phones. The new camera app now houses the settings on the bottom and can be accessed by swiping up instead of down. The app is also split into dedicated photo and video modes, with each having its own sub-modes.
Pixel 8 Pro Camera app
An interesting change here is that the Pro and the non-Pro models have different camera settings. Both phones get the option to shoot in RAW but the Pro phone also lets you pick between 12MP and 50MP resolution. You also get the option to force a lens choice and the camera will use your chosen lens regardless of the light levels or distance from the subject. This way you can avoid the phone automatically switching lenses without your permission.
Both phones get a new menu with the ability to adjust brightness, shadow detail, and white balance but the Pro model also gets manual focus with focus peaking, shutter speed control, and ISO. This, along with the previously available RAW capture, finally brings full control over the image capture experience that was always missing on the Pixel phones. Having said that, these are all software features, and gatekeeping them to the Pro model only is disappointing.
The new Pixel 8 phones can also capture images in Display P3 color space. This option needs to be enabled from the advanced settings and is available on both phones. Enabling it will save the original raw data in a much wider Display P3 color space that can show a greater range of shades, especially in the green and red areas of visible light compared to sRGB but you need an appropriate display and subject to fully see the difference. All images shown below, however, are in standard sRGB for compatibility.
Another cool thing with the image capture experience is actually in the Photos app. Like the iPhones, the Pixel 8 phones now capture additional metadata regarding the luminance levels of the images they capture. This information is then used to generate HDR PQ-like effect in the Photos app, where image highlights are automatically brightened when you view them, creating a stunning high dynamic range effect. It was always a cool trick previously found only on the OLED iPhones and we are glad it is making its way to more devices.
Now moving on to the bread and butter of Pixel devices, and that is the image quality from the cameras. Starting with the main camera, both phones offer great image quality on the main camera with excellent dynamic range and a good amount of detail despite the now fairly limited 12MP image resolution. The images have the classic Pixel look with Google deploying its usual bag of tricks to achieve it, such as exposing for the highlights, boosting contrast in the mid-tones, sharpening edges, and a cooler white balance with a magenta bias.
Pixel 8 Pro main camera
Compared to the previous generation Pixel 7 models, the new phones show minor improvement in perceived detail although it could very well be a result of increased sharpening, which is noticeably higher this year. The shadow detail also seems slightly cleaner. Aside from that, however, the image quality doesn't show major changes from last year's models.
Main camera: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
Compared to the new iPhone 15 Max camera, the Pixel 8 Pro images look sharper even when compared to the default 24MP images of the iPhone. Make no mistake, however, as the iPhone images are plenty detailed and Apple does not sharpen its images as much, which gives the impression of less detail on the iPhone even though they are largely identical.
Main camera: Pixel 8 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro
The color and dynamic range differences are much more significant. The iPhone camera leans towards warmer and greener tones compared to the Pixel's cooler and magenta. The Pixel phones do have a more consistent white balance, however, and the iPhone tends to sway considerably, which means when it misses it misses by a mile. It's very easy to get overly warm or overly cool images with the iPhone whereas the Pixel white balance is always consistent from shot to shot.
Moving to the ultra-wide exposes more differences. The Pixel 8 Pro has the best-looking ultra-wide images of this bunch. It has more detail than the 12MP ultra-wide images from the Pixel 7 Pro and the Pixel 8 and is also cleaner overall. The Pixel 8, while seemingly having the same ultra-wide camera as the Pixel 7 Pro, also has cleaner shadow detail, meaning the Tensor G3 image processing has improved over the G2. All three are better than the Pixel 7 ultra-wide, which was neither very wide nor had auto-focus.
Ultrawide: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
Compared to the iPhone 15 Pro's ultra-wide, the Pixel 8 Pro scores an easy win. The iPhone's UW camera really hasn't improved much over the previous model and is still quite soft. It's the only real weak link in the iPhone's otherwise very capable camera system.
Ultrawide: Pixel 8 Pro • iPhone 15 Pro
The zoom results were quite interesting. First of all, the Pixel 8 phones have a very different idea of what 2x magnification is compared to the Pixel 7 phones and even the iPhone 15 Pro. While all phones have roughly similar main focal lengths, the Pixel 8 phones crop much more for 2x magnification compared to any of the other phones. This resulted in, for example, the 2x Pixel 8 images looking much more cropped than the Pixel 7 or iPhone images.
Keeping that in mind, let's compare the 2x results first. This magnification isn't native to any of the phones compared here but is still commonly used. The Pixel 8 phones did not do particularly well here. The images are oversharpened and there is a decent amount of fizzling artifacts around high frequency detail. Both the Pixel 7 phones and the iPhone perform very well here.
2x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
At 3x, our iPhone 15 Pro was operating at native quality and provided the cleanest, sharpest results. Having said that, the Pixel 8 Pro also did well and whatever was plaguing the 2x results didn't seem to be an issue here. The 3x crop was also accurate and not over-magnified as with 2x. Image quality was largely identical to the Pixel 7 Pro with only a slight boost to textural detail.
3x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
However, while the Pixel 8 Pro was doing well, the Pixel 8 was really struggling at 3x. All images we captured at 3x just looked bad with a metric ton of artifacts and a poorly upscaled quality to them that made them unsightly on anything other than the phone's display without zooming in. We are not sure what is going on here but the image processing was clearly struggling and we do not think it's supposed to be this way.
Moving on to 5x, we are now in the native zoom range of the Pro Pixel models. The Pixel 8 Pro 5x shots looked excellent with very good detail and clarity across the image. The second best was surprisingly the iPhone 15 Pro, which even though does not have a native 5x lens, kept up admirably with the Pixel 8 Pro with a very good-looking image. The Pixel 7 Pro came third with a soft image that should be familiar to anyone who's used the phone. The non-Pro Pixels bring up the rear, with both looking pretty rough and the new phone being marginally better.
5x zoom: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
Next is a brief look at low-light photography with this single scene shot with very dim warm LED ambient lighting with the most random assortment of objects. All shots were taken in the default photo mode but all phones automatically enable night mode in low light so it doesn't really matter.
The iPhone 15 Pro image has good detail and color but is ultimately fairly dark with a clearly visible luminance noise pattern. It's the only one that noticeably looks like it was shot in the dark. Meanwhile, all four Pixel images are beautifully lit to the point you can't even tell if they were shot in low light, with good detail and no noise.
Main camera: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
Things get worse with the ultra-wide; the iPhone 15 Pro falls further behind and even the last year's Pixel phones are leagues ahead.
Ultrawide: iPhone 15 Pro • Pixel 8 Pro • Pixel 7 Pro • Pixel 8 • Pixel 7
There is no visible improvement in low light performance in this particular test between the Pixel 8 series and Pixel 7 series phones. They all look good. If anything, the Pixel 7 phones had better white balance as both Pixel 8 phones leaned heavily towards magenta.
Finally, here's a look at the video from the Pixel 8 Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro shot at 4K 30FPS. The iPhone video still looks objectively superior as it had more accurate color reproduction of the original scene, greater detail, and also better stabilization. The Pixel 8 Pro had an overly warm color tone, noticeable warping and jitter in stabilization, and also a softer image overall.
Early verdict
We are still in the process of testing the Pixel 8 phones and there will be more to come later. For now, we have mixed feelings about these devices.
Among the things we liked are the new designs, which may look a bit generic now but are far more comfortable to hold, especially the smaller Pixel 8, which is absolutely delightful. The new displays are also terrific and possibly the best hardware upgrade this generation. The software is clean as usual, there are a lot of AI things to play around with, and the seven-year update promise is commendable.
Pixel 8 next to Pixel 8 Pro
The cameras this year feel more like a sidegrade after initial testing so it's unsurprising that Google is relying heavily on AI and cloud-based processing to improve things further. They are still great cameras but nothing that will give Pixel 7 or even Pixel 6 owners severe FOMO.
What's clearly unimpressive, however, is the new Tensor G3 chip. While we weren't shocked to see it get smacked around in benchmarks by two or even three-generation-old Qualcomm and Apple chips, it was surprising just how anemic it feels even in actual everyday use. You simply do not get that smooth and fast flagship experience you expect after paying this much money, and it's disappointing that Google thinks this is a fine compromise to make in order to do some AI trickery locally that it seemingly couldn't with off-the-shelf Snapdragon chips.
But that's all we have to say for now. Check back again later for the full review of these devices.
from GSMArena.com - Latest articles https://ift.tt/YJk95Ql
via IFTTT
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Google Pixel 8 & 8 Pro hands-on review"
Post a Comment