The Long-Term Software Support of the Google Pixel 8 and 8 Pro Smartphones: a Test of Google’s Competence with Apple’s
Even though the new phones are $100 pricier than last year’s devices, they look like they have a little more hardware improvements in them. But the showstopper feature of the new Pixels may be Google’s software support, as it’s claiming the new phones will see seven whole years of OS and security updates — rivaling Apple’s reign as the longest-lasting phones.
That support promise will make other manufacturers work harder. Samsung only promises four years of OS updates and five years of security fixes for the Galaxy S23 line, which starts at around $800, and its much pricier Z Fold 5. And Apple, despite having a great track record for ongoing OS updates, makes no promises at all. Fairphone has five OSupgrades and is far from a major player in the phone market.
The software support policies of the two lineups are very different. Google says it’ll support both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro with at least seven years of Android and security updates. The security updates in the Pixel 7 lineup are only five years long, which will cause its software to be out of date sooner than the newer phones.
Google has the freedom to offer this longer support period thanks to using its own Tensor processor in the Pixel 8 series, which gives it more control over the hardware that’s gone into the phone compared to most of its Android competitors. Fairphone, a competing Android manufacturer that prioritizes lengthy support periods for its devices, has publicly spoken about how difficult it is to continue to support a phone after a chipset manufacturer like Qualcomm ends support for the processor used. The power is in the hands of it’s owner.
Apple, another manufacturer that also produces its own processors for its phones, offers similarly lengthy support periods. The company didn’t talk about the number of years it supports its device for, but released five major version updates for the iPhoneX before ending support with iOS 17 this year. Apple will occasionally release security patches for older devices.
The new Pixel 8 and 8 Pro have rounder corners that should make each phone easier to hold, compared to the last-gen models. The Pro 8 has a flatter screen along with a matt finish on the back glass panel.
All of the phones also sport OLED displays, but they differ in terms of refresh rates. If you do a lot of mobile gaming, you might want to opt for the Pro models. The Pixel 8 and 9 are powered by 12 gigahertz of RAM and 120 kilohertz of processor power, so they should be easy to use. ThePixel 8 offers only 8g of memory with the average refresh rate being between 60 and 120 percent, whereas thePixel 8 Pro offers between 1 and 120 percent. In contrast, the standard Pixel 7 and Pixel 7A offer a lower 90hz refresh rate.
These are some fairly predictable year-over-year upgrades, but this time around, Google added something harder to guess: a temperature sensor. The company says you can use it to scan objects like beverages and surfaces to read their temperature and that it’s applying to the FDA to allow its use for body temperature sensing. That’s not really a feature anyone has been clamoring for on their phone, as far as I can tell, and feels a little like it was added to the product roadmap sometime in mid-2020. In more useful news, Google has upgraded the Pixel 8 and 8 Pro’s face unlock technology so that it can now be used for payments — previously, it could only be used to unlock your phone.
There’s a 50-megapixel main camera sensor with a slightly brighter f/1.7 lens attached. The ultrawide camera which is now capable of focusing as close as 2 centimeters in macro mode has a higher-res 48 mp camera, which the Pro brings with it. The 10.5-megapixel front-facing camera gets an upgrade, too, now featuring autofocus. You can control focus, shutter speed, which lens is being used, and access 50-metres of video through the native camera app on the Pro phone.
PhotonCloud: New AI Features and Software for Video and Photo Enhancement, Audio Magic Eraser, Video Enhance and Zoom Enhance
There are a number of new features in the software in the photo service. When you take a bunch of photos of the people, you can choose the face you want to use and then save it all in one final frame. There’s also Audio Magic Eraser, which aims to isolate distracting sounds in videos so you can minimize or remove them.
There are a few features that aren’t available at the moment, but will be soon, like Magic Editor, which was showcased at I. Video boost take some of the processing off-device and into the cloud to enable night sight video. And Zoom Enhance — only available to the Pixel 8 Pro, interestingly — can help you zoom in on images and recreate fine detail after capture.
Google’s Assistant gets some AI updates, too, though it’s far from going full-on Bard. It will be able to understand speech more effectively because it will be better at recognizing pauses. It’ll also be able to translate web pages to read them aloud to you. Even the keyboard gets a little AI flavor with a one-touch option to clean up typos and grammatical errors.
A Short Survey of Google Pixels: Are 8 and 8 Pro the Right Phone for You? The Case of the 6.1-inch Pixel 7A and 7 Pro
The cost of phones and their size is the first thing we will talk about. The 6.1-inch Google Pixel 7A is the smallest of all of the phones and also the most affordable, starting at $499. The Pixel 7 and Pixel 8 are slightly bigger at 6.3 and 6.2 inches, respectively, and start at $599 and $699. Meanwhile, the Pixel 8 Pro — like the 7 Pro — is once again the largest at 6.7 inches and starts at $999, which is $100 more than the 7 Pro’s original price. The Pro models also offer more storage configuration, with the 8 Pro maxing out at 1TB and the 7 Pro offering up to 512GB. The other phones take up more space than the other phones.
Looking at it all side by side, what do you think? Are either the Pixel 8 or 8 Pro the phone for you? Is seven years of updates enough to convince you to upgrade from an older Pixel or even sway you from Samsung’s or Apple’s camps? Tell us what you think in the comments.
Only the Pixel 7A has a main camera that can capture 4K video at 60 frames per second. The Pixel 8 Pro will also arrive with new video capabilities in December, like Video Boost for more true-to-life colors, which will even work in low-light conditions when using the Night Sight feature.
You can use the new features in the Pixel 8 and 7 lineups, no matter which series you own. However, you can only create AI-generated wallpapers by describing them on the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro at launch. However, other Android 14 features — like the ability to sign in to third-party apps with your fingerprint or use your phone as a webcam — are available on Pixel 7 phones.
We do know, however, that the Pixel 8 sports a larger 4,575mAh battery capacity than its predecessor’s 4,355mAh. The 7, 7 Pro, and the 8 Pro have different battery capacities, but the 7 Pro is larger than the 8 Pro, so it could last a bit longer than the 7 series.
That is just a brief overview of what distinguishes each phone. If you want to learn more, please take a look at the table below.
That means it’s better not to think of Google’s promise as seven “full” versions of Android, so much as seven years’ worth of updates, whatever it is they contain. There are lots of questions for the company to answer about what features they’ll get with the Pro phone. It’s not as meaningful of a commitment if Google arbitrarily picks and chooses which features go to any given phone.
Small components are being broken up by Google into Android. The company baked Project Treble into Android Oreo as a “modular base” that drew lines between parts of the OS, making it easier for Google and third-party manufacturers to add features without concern about breaking other ones. That later led to Project Mainline, which did a similar thing.
