Testing – Pixel 8 Pro: Well-designed, weird and fun

Google called: they want the epidemic back. Okay, that was a joke, but I’m not kidding when I say the Pixel 8 Pro has a temperature gauge. Which until now cannot – or rather cannot – measure your body temperature. This requires a green light from the relevant authorities.

So Google found itself in a difficult position. They can’t pretend that this sensor under the flash doesn’t exist, it’s quite visible after all. But on the other hand, it has no real value at all at the moment. No one would exactly buy a Pixel 8 Pro to find out the temperature of a baby’s porridge (a use that Google’s PR department has rattled off in some desperation).

Being the obedient phone tester I am anyway, I held my Pixel 8 Pro over a pot of boiling water. They give off different temperatures each time, and I don’t associate any of them with the boiling point.

I just think we’re moving forward.

The Pixel 8 Pro is reminiscent of the original Pixel 7 Pro (whose launch marked the Swedish debut of Google phones). A few grams and millimeters separate the units. The sprawling screen is still 6.7 inches. The camera module is still present as a strip on the back.

However, when placed side by side, some differences emerge. The Pixel 8 Pro has a perfectly flat screen, while last year’s model has a strange waterfall design, where the screen curves down toward the edges of the phone. The back is no longer glossy but matte, making it a little smoother. The three camera lenses on the back are now found in the same window.

However, underneath all the glass and aluminum is a device that explains that this is a new phone.

First, the 8 Pro is powered by the new Tensor G3 processor. As usual, it is optimized to handle all types of AI applications. Compared to the first-generation Tensor chip (which debuted in the Pixel 6), the G3 can run twice as many machine learning models on the device, according to Google.

It is said that thanks to the new hardware, Google Assistant is now a better listener who understands that we humans add a lot of filler sounds between the words we pronounce. After several attempts in Swedish later, it turned out that it doesn’t work in all languages. The result will be a little better if you speak English with the assistant. But considering the conversations you can have now using Chat GPT, the whole thing seems pretty silly. Google is currently working on integrating its chatbot, Bard, into Google Assistant, but the feature has not been launched yet.

The highest biometric standards

Other Tensor-related news is that the Pixel 8 Pro now meets the highest biometric standards for face unlock on Android. According to Google, it’s nice to be able to log in to their bank, but in Sweden, at least, Bank-id has not opened up this possibility. On the iPhone, I can verify myself with Bank ID with my face, but on the Pixel 8 Pro, it’s my fingerprint.

In benchmark tests, the Tensor G3 can’t measure up to the latest Apple or Qualcomm circuits, but as I said, Google is putting almost all of its weight on the AI, whose performance is difficult to evaluate. But it is undeniable that the user will become familiar with the details of AI once they use the camera and photo apps.

I don’t know if I’d dare say the Pixel 8 Pro takes the best photos, but it’s clearly one of the most fun smartphones to shoot at this year.

It starts with the device itself. The main camera (50MP) and telephoto lens (48MP) have larger apertures and have more light-sensitive sensors compared to the Pixel 7 Pro. The wide-angle lens has been upgraded from last year’s 12MP to 48MP. It also lets in more light than before, and overall focus has been improved, with the ability to take photos of objects as close as 2cm away. The telephoto lens has 5x optical zoom. The selfie camera, at 10.5MP, is almost the same junk and grain as the 7 Pro, but is gifted with autofocus.

On top of this foundation, Google has added more manual control that is also easier to manage. It’s almost as easy to manipulate shutter speed, white balance, and ISO values ​​as it is to switch between portrait, dark, and panorama modes. In addition, it is now possible to shoot at 50MP in raw format and even select lenses manually.

Even better: The Pixel 8 Pro has support for so-called focus peaking. If you want to adjust focus manually, the viewfinder window can indicate where to focus with a color marker. Unfortunately, this feature seemed to be buggy during testing, at least for macro photography. Only after restarting the phone it works better.

Over the years, Google’s Pixel phones have become experimental, faceless phones. However, the move to a Tensor chip represents a shift (intentional or not). Since the Pixel 6, there’s been more direction, more of a stamp, and a clear sender. But if the Pixel is associated with anything — other than all the talk about AI — it’s its ability to fill your photo album with good photos.

As we’ve become accustomed to on older Google phones, the Pixel 8 Pro handles photos taken in the dark well. The wide angle is wider this year and can reproduce dramatic scenes. The photos are not perfect, but in return the shutter is now so fast that it is actually possible to take decent photos even when the subject is captured in motion. Color reproduction isn’t quite as restrictive as on the iPhone 15, but it’s less saturated than many other Android phones.

Additionally, the Pixel 8 Pro has support for Ultra HDR, a format developed internally by Google. In addition to the fact that it can give images a richer range between highlights and shadows, it is also said to largely preserve overall image quality. I can’t say the difference is huge, but maybe I was spoiled at this point. Perhaps one should be more impressed by how photos with a lot of light and shadow, taken with a handheld camera, retain a lot of detail and look very natural.

Photography is always an approximate representation of what our eyes see. When the world’s best photographers win documentary awards, their images are highly processed. At the moment the photo was taken, the photographer had chosen among the camera settings, hoping to obtain a particular result. So when cell phone manufacturers computerize images – and Google has often been a pioneer in this area – to make them look like they were taken with more powerful sensors and lenses, I think this is no more cheating than using Photoshop.

However, what is happening now with generative AI is not so much an enhancement of reality as a pure manipulation of it. With the Pixel 8 Pro, Google wants to not only recreate moments “as we remember them,” but also moments that never existed.

I actually started last year with the Magic Eraser function. Select an area of ​​the image to remove an unwanted object. Instead, an AI estimate is generated of what the background behind the removed object should look like. This year it’s joined by the Magic Editor where objects can be cropped, zoomed in, zoomed out and moved. How good the results are depends a bit on whether the background is reasonably uniform.

Improve the sound

Another feature, “Best Photo,” is almost trickier. If a user takes several photos of the same group of people at the same time, parts of the faces of the people appearing in the photos will be saved. The faces then appear as icons below the image and the user can select as desired. In other words, the perfect group photo is only a few clicks away – even if they are fragments of reality that were put together at different times.

I don’t really have any moral or ethical concerns here but I can’t help but mention that this type of AI-driven editing is here to stay. If there was ever a time when photographs were automatically considered documents of truth, that’s over.

Somewhat confusingly, there is a so-called “magic eraser” this year. One for still images and one for moving video. They also do completely different things. With the video eraser, noise and wind are attenuated so that sounds can be heard more easily. In fact, the result is so good that words spoken by someone at a distance, which you would hardly know were said, suddenly appear as if they came out of nowhere. You feel a bit like a spy.

It is also for preparation. A subsequent update promises a feature that until now has been mostly associated with movie secret agents: making blurry, zoomed-in images clear.

All of these new AI tricks are already happening in the Google Photos app, but so far they’re only available to Pixel 8 and 8 Pro users.

With the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, Google is promising seven years of software and security updates. Good thing, because with the new prices, you can expect to keep the phone for a while. Last year, the Pixel 7 started at SEK7,290 and the 7 Pro started at SEK9,990. This year, you can pay as little as SEK 9,590 for the Pixel 8 and up to SEK 13,090 for the Pixel 8 Pro.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine us using a Pixel 8 Pro in 2030, when mammoths have been resurrected, artificial intelligence has taken over the world, and the rest of us have spent all our time out in the cosmos. The Pixel 8 Pro will probably be a footnote in mobile history by then. Great phone, fun camera, and oddly equipped with a thermometer.