What the Support of Google’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro Means Compared to Apple’s Security Patches for Android Devices

Now, Google has announced the $699 Pixel 8 and $999 Pixel 8 Pro (which are $100 price increases over last year’s phones), each due to arrive on October 12th, and once again, they look a lot like a slow burn of subtle hardware improvements — albeit in a slick new light-blue color option on the Pro. It is believed that the new phones will see seven years of OS and security updates, which is about the same amount of time Apple’s devices have been around.

Although seven years of security support puts Google out ahead of its mainstream competitors, it’s still technically beaten by Fairphone, which recently announced the Fairphone 5 with a promised eight years of security updates (with 10 years as a stretch goal). Fairphone has no plan to sell its fifth generation device in the US and only plans to release five major OS updates.

In theory, Google’s pledge should mean the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro get updated to at least 2029’s Android 20 and maybe even 2030’s Android 21, depending on when in the year the update gets released. Even if there is a change in practice for the upcoming years, we won’t get into its flaky history of ongoing support for other services and initiatives until after seven years.

Thanks to the use of its own Turing processor in the Pixel 8 series, it has more control over the hardware going into the phone compared to most of its 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 its own hands.

Apple, which makes its own phones, also provides lengthy support periods. Although the company doesn’t indicate when it will support its devices again, it released five major updates for the last version of the device, the iPhone X. Even then, Apple occasionally releases security patches for older devices.

The new Pixel 8 and 8 Pro are thinner than the last-gen models, so they should be easier to hold. The Pro 8’s back glass panels have a matt finish along with a flatter screen, which we liked.

ThePixel 7 Pro is the most responsive phone with a high-resolution display, while thePixel 8 Pro is second. That’s still a much higher resolution than the 1080p display found on the Pixel 8, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7A, however. The Pixel 8 phones are also much brighter than the Pixel 7 series, with Google claiming the Pixel 8 Pro offers a peak brightness of 2,400 nits in direct sunlight.

Some of the most significant new camera features aren’t related to the hardware at all but are seen in the Google Photos app. The Magic Eraser feature that was announced back at Google I/O will be available after launch for the Pixel 8 and lets you completely change an image by moving subjects around and changing backgrounds. A new feature will combine images taken from a series to make sure that everyone is smiling at the same time.

The camera has a 50-megapixel main sensor with a f/1.7 lens. The Pro’s 5x telephoto module gets an upgraded 48-megapixel camera with faster autofocus, and there’s a higher-res 48-megapixel sensor in the ultrawide camera, which is now capable of focusing as close as 2cm in macro mode. A new front-facing camera that has autofocus gets an upgrade too. And the Pro phone gets some pro camera controls: you’ll be able to control focus, shutter speed, which lens is being used, and access 50-megapixel JPEG or RAW shooting right from the native camera app.

Audio Magic Eraser and Best Take: New Software Updates from Google Photons, Macro Focus, Audio Magic Enhancement, and Translating Web Pages

Naturally, there are lots of new software features — all housed in Google Photos. When you take a series of photos of a group of people, you’ll have the option afterward to choose the best face for your subjects and save it all in one final frame. Audio Magic Eraser is a program that tries to remove the distractive sounds from videos.

The new chip adds new photo and video capabilities to the lineup. This includes Best Take, a new feature that Google says combines group photos that are similar into one image where everybody “looks their best.” Macro Focus is supposed to make small subjects bigger by magnifying them, and Audio Magic Eraser is meant to remove the distractive sounds from videos.

Google’s Assistant gets some AI updates, too, though it’s far from going full-on Bard. Google says it will be able to understand speech better and recognize pauses and fillers like “um” more effectively. 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.

The Google Pixel 8 Series: An Ultracompact, Low-Lens Two-Layer Camera for Telephoto Photography and Face Authentication

The Pixel 8 maintains the two-lens camera setup, updating its 50-megapixel main camera with a wider aperture and its 12-megapixel ultrawide camera with autofocus and macro capabilities. The new main camera is claimed to be 21 percent more sensitive to light than the Pixel 7’s camera and is the same sensor as used on the Pixel 8 Pro. Once again, though, if you want a telephoto, you’ll have to buy the Pixel 8 Pro.

The new display can be adjusted between 60 and 120 degrees for more battery life savings, which is why it is still not labeled as a lite display. The Pixel 8 Pro gives you a screen that can go from 1hertz to 120 hertz at no extra cost. The Apple device has the same price as thePixel 8, and it comes with a 60Hz screen.

The display on the Pixel 8 will reach 2000 nits and support always-on display features. The battery in the new Pixel 8 is larger than that in the old one. That battery is not huge but also not small — Google claims “beyond 24 hour battery life,” but I would read that with a skeptical eye. You can use wireless charging for less time, or you can use the 30W wired charge from Google that will bring up to 50 percent in 30 minutes.

One of the more surprising additions to the Pixel 8 series is support for secure face authentication. If you’ve been following Pixel hardware over the years, you’ll remember that the Pixel 4 was the only one to ever support facial recognition as a secure biometric authentication method, utilizing Google’s radar technology. The Pixel 8 series doesn’t have the Soli chip that powered that function in the older handset, but these new phones have the same capabilities. It is possible for you to use your face to access banking and payment apps that usually require a PIN or fingerprints. Both of the phones have a feature that doesn’t like face recognition.

Google has also redesigned the Pixel camera app to separate video and shooting modes. The new app for the Apple product does not have the extended manual controls found on the actual device.

First up, let’s talk about how much the phones cost and their size. The 6.1-inch Google Pixel 7A is the smallest of all of the phones and also the most affordable, starting at $499. The 6.4 and 6.2 inches phones are cheaper than the 5.8 inch one 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 offer more storage capacity, with the 8 Pro and 7 Pro both offering up to 1 terabytes of space. In contrast, the other phones max out at 256GB.

The large amount of space that the A-series processors allow allows people to use iPhone for years on end without having to worry about issues. So, how do Google’s new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro stack up in the spec department? If these phones are still being used by seven years, what sort of performance enhancements are included to make up for any issues that may arise with a newer version of the OS?

Both the Pixel 8 and Pixel 7 lineups can run on Android 14, and you’ll be able to use its new features 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.

Allday battery life was found to be offered by thePixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, but not the 7A. Google claims both the Pixel 8 phones should at least last over 24 hours if not up to 72 hours with the battery saver mode on. It is difficult to say how long the phones will last in reality since we have yet to test them.

What distinguishes a phone from a tablet? A brief survey of the standard features of different models of cell phones in the smartphone market

That is an overview of what distinguishes each phone. We have gathered all the specifications you need to know in the table below.