My journey with Pixel phones started long ago. I've had several Nexus phones and tablets before I got my first Pixel phone. The feeling of a pure Android device has always been attractive (one of the big selling points), and the hardware has generally offered a lot of bang for its buck.
As a result, the Pixel 7 Pro has been my personal phone of choice for a year, and I therefore find it very easy to immediately notice the changes made to both software and hardware. Google themselves have been extremely confident before the launch of the Pixel 8 Pro and say that they have now taken a seven-mile step, which it turns out they actually can kind of back up. But not everything is better and the first impression when I unpacked the phone was actually somewhat disappointing. The new phone feels clumsier than its predecessor despite being marginally smaller (we're talking about just under a millimetre), and I blame this on the camera design and the fact that the screen is completely flat. However, both of these shortcomings have other advantages, of course, and the flat screen in particular means far fewer touches by mistake from the edges.
Fortunately, my initial, slightly negative judgment is quickly put to shame, because this is a more sturdy build than the Pixel 7 Pro and feels wonderfully solid. The screen is also brighter than its predecessor and of noticeably better quality, and even the sound is better for those who want to use the phone to play through its built-in speakers (although of course it can never be compared to actually having real speakers).
The biggest software innovation in the Pixel 8 Pro is AI and machine learning that now lurks in every corner of the device. But when you boot it up, you'll notice very little of this, as nothing really indicates that the phone offers features that few, if any, competitors can match in this area. Everything that happens under the hood is powered by the Google Tensor G3 chip, which has plenty of performance and makes the phone feel fairly future-proof even if Google adds more and more features down the line.
So, what are the new features? Most people will use the fancy photo editing tools, where AI is now fully implemented. It allows you to remove airplane noise, wind, or similar background noise from a video you've recorded at the touch of a button so it sounds like you're speaking in a quiet room under ideal conditions. You can also take multiple group photos and then have the AI use the faces that came out best in a single image, so your mother-in-law's angry look is replaced with a smile and your dad's yawn with a closed mouth. It's also easy to move objects around in pictures, so if you're taking a picture of your partner in front of a waterfall, but realise that he/she was a bit off centre, you can now easily put your partner exactly where they needed to be. Even blurred images can be sharpened and you can remove distracting objects from photos with ease.
Cheating? Maybe, but at the same time very practical and I suspect that these are features that will really appeal to those who want to take perfect pictures for Instagram. The tools mostly work very well, but not always, and if you remove something from very messy backgrounds, the AI sometimes has a hard time finding a credible solution for what should be in its place. It must be said, however, that the functions are unnecessarily well hidden (this was a problem even with the Pixel 7 Pro, which had some of these functions in a simpler version) and there is no good explanation of how everything works. Here, Google should have done a better job.
In general, however, the camera is very good, as they really have always been in Google's Pixel series and I feel that the Pixel 8 Pro with all the AI help is currently the reigning champ. Even at long distances (5x optical zoom) and in dark rooms, the results are astonishingly good, and close-ups are fantastic.
When I try to play Call of Duty, Fortnite and even a demanding game like Black Desert Mobile, everything runs smoothly, which bodes well for those who want to play a lot. The battery (5050 mAh) is also more than acceptable and I have been able to go for over two days with the battery saving mode on and normal use. If I'm gaming, it obviously draws more, and even though it doesn't deliver quite the same battery performance as Asus and OnePlus devices, it's still very good.
An odd feature that has also been added is a built-in thermometer. It's an infrared sensor that sits under the flash and with an accompanying app called Thermometer, you can then check how cold your beer is or if the bath water is the right temperature. What you shouldn't do though according to the software is check if you have a fever, probably because Google doesn't want to be accused of misdiagnosis. To measure temperature, you just hold your phone five centimetres away from something, choose what material it is (there is a default setting, but the result will be noticeably better if you take the time to change it) and get a result. My experience is that it varies about one degree from measurement to measurement, so it feels pretty accurate, and if I measure on my forehead (although it should not be used to measure fever, as previously stated), I get 35-36 degrees and is thus quite accurate even there.
So, does Google fully support the claim that the Pixel 8 Pro is the next big thing for smartphones? As I wrote in the introduction, it is true to some extent. It is an incredibly nice phone in terms of hardware and the software, especially the camera, which is something out of the ordinary. But not all AI edits are good and some are downright bad. Also, I think it's generally a problem with Android that apps are highly optimised for Samsung's hardware and software, and smaller and more quirky apps (in my case, a diabetes app and the Yale lock we have at home) strangely mess with Google's pure Android system, but not with Samsung's counterparts.
That said, it's still a really nice phone that, despite a higher price than its predecessor, offers an equivalent and in many cases better option than much more expensive alternatives. And the fact that it is so good for gaming bodes well. In short, it is easy to highly recommend the Pixel 8 Pro, although I think it will be next year that we will really see the AI revolution in smartphones that has now begun with this lovely gadget.