All the news on Google’s Pixel 8, 8 Pro, and 8A

Along with a new value-priced entry for the Pixel 8 lineup, Google has some news about the largest member of the Pixel lineup, as its 128GB Pixel Tablet is now available for preorder at $399 — $100 cheaper than the launch price last summer.

However, to reach that price, you’ll have to go without its smart display-like magnetic Charging Speaker Dock.

The Pixel 8A is officially here, with very little in the way of surprises since it leaked to all heck over the past few weeks — as Google hardware always does. The 8A gets Google’s latest processor, adds a bunch of new AI features, and still starts at $499 in the US. But the very best news is that the 8A adopts the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro’s seven years of software support, which is just unheard of in a midrange phone.

The 8A retains the same general shape and size as its predecessor. But its 6.1-inch screen gets a couple of significant updates: the top refresh rate is now 120Hz, up from 90Hz, and the panel gets up to 40 percent brighter, up to 2,000 nits in peak brightness mode. They’re important upgrades, especially since the 8A’s main competition in the US, the OnePlus 12R, comes with an excellent display.

The Google Pixel 8A might not be getting that rumored price hike after all. Details shared with Smartprix by reliable leaker OnLeaks suggest that the base 128GB model will have the same $499 price as its predecessor.

However, Google could bump the price of the Pixel 8A to $559 for a new 256GB storage option, according to Smartprix. The leak also suggests that the Pixel 8A will come with a larger 4,500mAh battery instead of the 4,385mAh option that came with the Pixel 7A.

We’ve already seen a bunch of images revealing what Google’s Pixel 8A might look like, but now, leaked marketing materials shared by Android Headlines give us an even better picture of what we can expect. The promotional images suggest that the budget-friendly Pixel 8A will come with seven years of security updates.

But the materials don’t indicate whether the phone will come with seven years of Android OS upgrades, something its flagship Pixel 8 and 8 Pro have. Still, the seven years makes a big difference from Google’s previous policy for Pixel phones, which only provided five years of security updates and three years of Android OS upgrades.

We’re a month out from Google I/O, where the company will likely announce its new Pixel 8A phone. At this point, there have already been plenty of renders and even some real-world shots. And now, courtesy of Android Headlines, it appears official marketing images of the device have leaked.

If accurate, they show that Google plans to offer the Pixel 8A in four colors: black, porcelain, blue, and a very vibrant green. It’s certainly more saturated than the subdued “mint” that Google added to the Pixel 8 color choices earlier this year.

We did it, y’all. We bullied Google into letting the Pixel 8 run on-device AI. Starting with the next Pixel feature drop, the Pixel 8 will use Gemini Nano for a couple of AI features.

Google announced Gemini Nano as its mobile-optimized large language model in December and said it would be a core part of Android in the future — but in its own device lineup, only the Pixel 8 Pro was able to use it. Despite using the same Tensor G3 chipset, the Pixel 8 wasn’t getting on-device AI because of “hardware limitations.” Pixel fans and watchful Android experts asked the same question: what the heck, Google?

Google’s Pixel 8A may have a 120Hz display — up from 90Hz in the Pixel 7A — and a brighter screen, according to Kamila Wojciechowska, whose past leaks have included videos of the pre-release Pixel Fold.

Google’s I/O 2024 conference is set for May 14th, when the company will likely talk a lot about AI again. That’s also probably where the company will announce the Pixel 8A.

The Pixel 8a phone is getting a new 256GB tier, at least according to rumblings heard from retailers by the usually reliable German tech news site WinFuture. The site’s sources also say it will come in four colors, like the $499 Pixel 7a, but it will cost a quite a bit more than that phone at €569.90, or about $618 USD.

According to WinFuture’s sources, the beefed-up storage version will cost even more — €630 (about $684 USD) — putting it a whiff away from the regular Pixel 8’s $699 price tag. However, as the site notes, that could be subject to change.

It’s hard to think of a more self-explanatory feature than Circle to Search: it does exactly what it sounds like it does. You circle something on your phone screen, tap a button, and voila! A page full of Google search results telling you about the thing you circled. Easy, right? The new feature is launching on five phones to start — the three members of Samsung’s brand-new Galaxy S24 series, as well as Google’s Pixel 8 and 8 Pro — before it comes to other “select, premium” Android phones.

Well, maybe it does need a little explaining. If the feature sounds familiar, you might be thinking of Google Lens, which is similar. But instead of opening up the Google app, you can use Circle to Search anywhere on your device. Just long-press the home button if you’re using three-button navigation — or the navigation handle if you’re using gesture nav — and it will appear on top of whatever app or screen you’re currently using. You can circle, highlight, or tap a subject, including text as well as images.

When Google introduced Night Sight on the Pixel 3, it was a revelation. 

It was as if someone had literally turned on the lights in your low-light photos. Previously impossible shots became possible — no tripod or deer-in-the-headlights flash needed.

Google is releasing a tool to help users diagnose problems with their Pixel phones. Users can launch the app by entering *#*#7287#*#* on the dial pad, allowing them to check whether their phone is working correctly before or after a repair.

There are a bunch of diagnostic tools available within the app. While users can run a full diagnostic test to detect issues across the entire device, there are also options to run individual tests for physical defects and problems affecting the phone’s display, sensors, and connectivity. The new tool is available on all Pixel phones in English.

Google is bringing some sophisticated new AI smarts to the Pixel 8 Pro today, but it’s not stopping there. The company is also rolling out its December feature drop for Pixel hardware, which includes two big software features for the 8 Pro — but plenty of new tricks for other devices as well.

Video Boost, which is exclusive to Google’s larger-size flagship, will be available starting today. It “uploads your videos to the cloud where our computational photography models adjust color, lighting, stabilization and graininess,” according to Google’s blog post. After that, you receive a touched-up video that “looks true to life.” This isn’t something anyone’s really gotten to test much yet, so we’re all about to find out together where Video Boost works well and where it doesn’t.

Gemini may be the biggest, most powerful large language model, or LLM, Google has ever developed, but it’s better suited to running in data centers than on your phone. With Gemini Nano, though, the company is trying to split the difference: it built a reduced version of its flagship LLM that can run locally and offline on your device. Well, a device, anyway. The Pixel 8 Pro is the only Nano-compatible phone so far, but Google sees the new model as a core part of Android going forward.

If you have a Pixel 8 Pro, starting today, two things on your phone will be powered by Gemini Nano: the auto-summarization feature in the Recorder app, and the Smart Reply part of the Gboard keyboard. Both are coming as part of the Pixel’s December Feature Drop. Both work offline since the model is running on the device itself, so they should feel fast and native. 

We’ve already seen a teardown of the standard Pixel 8 model, but now iFixit has taken apart the $999 Pixel 8 Pro, offering a close look at the new temperature sensing tech that lives beneath the phone’s display.

iFixit’s Shahram Mokhtari starts by removing the Pixel 8 Pro’s screen using a heating mat, a clamp, and a pick. After disconnecting the display from the device, Mokhtari folds back the 5G mmWave antenna cable and unscrews the main frame. From there, Mokhtari attempts to remove the 5,050mAh battery by pulling at the plastic tabs beneath the component.

When the Fitbit app relaunched with a new design last month, some users were dismayed to find that their step streaks had disappeared. Now, Google — which owns Fitbit — says it’s taking user feedback into consideration and bringing the feature back.

“In these first few weeks of trying out the new Fitbit app, you voiced key areas where you think we can improve the experience,” Google wrote in a Fitbit support blog.

The $999 Google Pixel 8 Pro takes good photos with its 50-megapixel f/1.68 main sensor. For the most part, subjects are sharp, colors aren’t too saturated, and the focus fall-off can fool you into thinking images came from a larger camera. But it’s important to remember that Google is a software company that sometimes makes hardware. And for every one photo it takes, there are two AI editing tools ready to either make its hardware look better than it really is or create a scene that isn’t necessarily true.

In the latest episode of my YouTube series Full Frame, I set out to take 1,000 photos with the Pixel 8 Pro. From 4K, 24FPS video of fall in upstate New York to ultrawide macro shots of my eyeballs, I put this system to the test.

I carried around a Pixel 7 Pro as my primary phone for several months and enjoyed many aspects of it — but the audio that came from its speakers was thin and feeble compared to flagships from Apple, Samsung, and others. And this wasn’t a new flaw in the Pixel line by any stretch: it’s something Google has overlooked over multiple years now.

I’d argue that things really went off the tracks starting with the Pixel 5, when Google replaced the conventional earpiece speaker with an over-engineered, under-display alternative that used vibrations to produce sound. The result was something that was passable for voice calls but underwhelming for anything else. It was a noticeable downgrade coming from perfectly adequate stereo speakers that Google had included on the Pixel 4 and 4 XL.

Google’s pitch for the Pixel phone in recent years has centered on how smart the phone is — that it’s one step ahead of you and can help take some of the pain out of your daily chores. The Pixel 6 and 7 didn’t quite live up to that vision, but these Pixel 8 devices feel like the first phones that could turn the sales pitch into a reality.

Right now, they’re better phones than their predecessors in some appreciable ways. And the potential of these devices is more compelling — the trouble is, Google is asking for a lot of your trust to get there.

For whatever reason, being second generally isn’t a good thing in our culture. It’s baked into our vernacular: sophomore slumps, second place is the first loser — even the parable of the prodigal son was about a second-born child. In the world of smartwatches, we never talk about the Apple Watch Series 2, Samsung went straight from the Galaxy Watch to the Galaxy Watch 3, and Wear OS 2 was Bad. So I’m chuffed that the $349.99 Google Pixel Watch 2 is the rare sequel that’s better than the original.

Before this watch launched, I wrote that all it needed was good battery life. Spoiler alert — the Pixel Watch 2 has made big strides on this front (though probably not enough for folks looking for a truly multiday smartwatch). The watch went from being a gadget I had to baby to something that could fit into my everyday life. That, plus a barrage of updates big and small, have, in turn, opened up a lot of possibilities that just weren’t there last year.