The front is Gorilla Glass 3, so you’ll want to use a screen protector to keep it free of scratches, but there’s an aluminum frame with clicky buttons and a plastic composite back that is deceptively luxurious. Unlike most devices on the market right now, it's a wonderfully compact phone and feels well made. Like the Pixel 7A, you get a sharp, 6.1-inch OLED screen that gets just bright enough to read in direct sunlight (not as bright as the Pixel 7A). It will likely start disappearing soon from store shelves, though. The Pixel 6A from 2022 ( 8/10, WIRED Recommends) remains an excellent buy, especially at its new price of $349 ( note: It frequently sells for $299 on Amazon). At least they can recharge slightly faster. With average use, you can expect them to last a full day, but anyone using their phone heavily will want to carry a power bank. The 4,485-mAh and 5,050-mAh batteries in the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro aren't anything to write home about. It's the only one with Pro camera controls in case you want to have more control over your photos, and it will eventually get a new feature called Video Boost, which will send your clips to Google's cloud servers for processing-you'll be sent back footage that is brighter with better stabilization, less noise, and brighter colors. You still get a 48-MP telephoto 5X optical zoom camera, and the Pro also exclusively has a front-facing camera with autofocus, allowing for sharper selfies. The Pixel 8 Pro has the same main camera but an upgraded 48-MP ultrawide that lets you go even closer to subjects for Macro Focus, and it's overall more effective in low light. There's also a 12-MP ultrawide now with autofocus, allowing it to utilize Google's Macro Focus for close-up shots. The Pixel 8 has a 50-MP main camera that crops into the center to offer a high-quality 2X zoom. The cameras have been upgraded all around, too. I go into a little more depth about these features in this story. It notably powers new smart imaging features, like Magic Editor, which lets you move subjects around in your photos and even change the type of sky Best Take, for fixing people's faces in case they blinked and Audio Magic Eraser, to remove unwanted sounds like a fire truck's siren from video clips. Inside is Google's Tensor G3 processor, which hasn't given me any trouble with any of the apps or games I threw at it. Both have 120-Hz screen refresh rates, but only the Pro model can adjust this from 1 Hz to 120 Hz depending on what's on the screen, which is more battery-efficient. It has a glossy glass back, whereas the 6.7-inch Pixel 8 Pro has a matte soft-touch glass back. They have a more rounded design that makes 'em comfy to hold, though this is more evident on the 6.2-inch Pixel 8, which is smaller than its predecessor. The 8 series has the brightest OLED displays ever on a Pixel, which means no need to squint when staring at the screen on a sunny day. That even includes stocking up on spare parts for repairs to the hardware. That's right, Google is finally promising seven years of security and Android OS upgrades to these phones, outclassing all its Android peers. These flagships are slightly more expensive this year, but they're the only Pixels to receive a software commitment of seven years. If you want the latest and greatest, then go for Google's Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro ( 7/10, WIRED Recommends). There's also no microSD card slot or headphone jack, so you'll have to look elsewhere if you want a phone with those features. The 4,385-mAh cell can take you through a full day of average use, but on busy days you will most likely need to top up before the sun goes down. The only things that are iffy on the Pixel 7A are the fingerprint sensor, which isn't as snappy or reliable as I'd like, and the battery life. Unfortunately, Google only promises three OS upgrades. You'll also get five years of security updates, so your Pixel 7A will be supported for quite a while. We've collected most of them below, but my favorites are Assistant Voice Typing for much faster and more accurate voice transcriptions using the built-in keyboard Now Playing to find out what music is playing around me and Call Screen, which has pretty much stopped all spam calls coming my way. One reason we recommend Pixel phones is that they include many great software features that are genuinely helpful.
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