a small phone that hides many surprises – SMARTmania.cz

• Google officially started selling its own hardware in the Czech Republic
• The Google Store now offers the Pixel 8, 8 Pro and lightweight Pixel 8a phones
• Today we will take a closer look at the Pixel 8, which has an excellent camera and a compact size

In November last year, we tested Google’s latest flagship model – the Pixel 8 Pro. A fair amount of time has passed since then, but a lot has changed. For example, the fact that the American manufacturer entered the domestic market with great fanfare – no gray imports, only official distribution, maximum market support and its own Google Store. It would be a shame not to try the base model Pixel 8.

Design and display

In terms of design, the latest generation of Pixels from Google are absolutely unique and this is one of their main strengths; that is, if it suits your taste. The Pixel 8 promises rounded edges and a glossy glass back, dominated by a metal panel in the top half. It hides a duo of cameras, laser autofocus, a microphone and a dual LED light.

However, the basic model of the current series will attract many more demanding customers because of something else. As one of the last Mohicans of our time, it basically offers compact dimensions. Less than 71 millimeters in width, 150.5 millimeters in height and a slightly thicker profile of 8.9 millimeters. I will also praise the solid construction and IP68 resistance against water and dust.

The Pixel is not exactly a crumb, you will feel it in your pocket due to the weight of 187 grams. But from the current offer, it is definitely one of the smallest smartphones ever. An absolute ideal for lovers of compact flags.

The dimensions have already been discussed. It is also evident on the display – the screen measures 6.2″. That’s a really small phone by today’s standards considering most of the market offers 6.5-6.7″. Honestly, I can’t really fault the display. It has a great Full HD+ resolution (at a ratio of 20:9), which at such a diagonal represents an excellent finesse of 428 ppi.

In addition, the display is of the OLED type, so you can count on perfect color reproduction and truly black black. And I can continue to praise: HDR10+ is available, 1400 nits of brightness in normal use and 2000 nits at one point when watching content in HDR10+.

Although I would have one complaint: the display is capable of a 120Hz refresh rate, but you only have to choose between 60 or an automatic increase to 120Hz in some cases. A little more complex settings – choir in the case of Android – wouldn’t hurt.

Performance, equipment and durability

Google has taken the sympathetic route of equipping all of its phones with the same chipset. The advantage for customers lies in the fact that whether they buy the Pixel 8 Pro for CZK 28,490 (or CZK 21,490 in pre-orders), the Pixel 8 for CZK 21,000 (CZK 16,990 in pre-orders), or the lightweight Pixel 8a for less than CZK 15,000 (respectively an irresistible 10,690 CZK as part of pre-orders), they will receive an equally powerful phone.

The current generation of phones from the American manufacturer thus has a self-made Tensor G3 chipset with a 9-core processor (one powerful Cortex-X3 core, four Cortex-A715 cores for normal work and then there are also four economical Cortex-A510 cores), a 4nm manufacturing process and a graphics by the Immortalis G715s accelerator.

I will tell you straight away that such powerful intestines are suitable for practically any work, playing graphically demanding games, but also for computing artificial intelligence directly on the device, as we will show in a moment. For illustration, I am attaching results from popular benchmarks. From those, it is clear that Tensor does not quite reach the quality of the top Snapdragon or Dimensity, but there really aren’t many limitations for users in terms of raw performance.

As for other equipment, the Pixel 8 comes with 8 GB of RAM, 128 GB of storage (the system eats up 13 GB), there are also good stereo speakers, a fast and reliable fingerprint reader in the display, 5G, Wi-Fi 7, Bluetooth 5.3, GPS and other positioning systems and NFC for contactless payments. If you need a UWB chip and a temperature sensor, however, you have to go for the most expensive of the three.

Although the middle Pixel has very compact dimensions, it offers a fairly standard Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 4575 mAh. And that’s very good, thanks to such a large battery (in relation to the dimensions of the phone) and the energy efficiency of the insides, I can confirm a normal endurance of 1.5 days to 2 days in case of moderate saving.

But if you go out with your phone in the field, take pictures all day, listen to music in headphones, chat on social networks, you can count on landing at home in the evening with 35-20% battery. And that is definitely not out of the ordinary. So, despite its compact dimensions, the Pixel 8 is not a typical “one-day” phone.

From the point of view of charging, you will only have 27W of power available, larger “wattage” cannot “flow” into the insides of the phone. It must be added that you still need a suitable charger for this, as it is not included in the package. Thanks to Power Delivery 3.0 support, you don’t necessarily only need an original adapter, any with this performance is enough. You can fully charge it in almost 1.5 hours, with a wireless charger with a power of 18 W it takes plus or minus 2 hours.

Android 14 powered by artificial intelligence

It’s no secret that Google’s Pixel phones always come with the purest form of Android. During testing, we had Android 14 with the April security patch available. You will be delighted by the record-breaking software support – Google promises updates for 7 years, i.e. until 2030, since the phone was launched in the second half of last year.

Pure Android isn’t much worth disassembling. However, Google has enriched it here with several interesting functions of artificial intelligence, or machine learning. For example, you can create a wallpaper according to primitive commands, and the generative AI will take care of everything.

Or there is a quite unique set of functions in the Google Photos application. You can edit images in various ways, using the Magic Editor function to remove a distracting element or character from the image, change other elements, or crop and then retouch the edges, again using AI. I’m just reminding you that you need the Photos app and internet access for these functions, because none of this happens directly on the device.

Camera and video

The Pixel 8 has a dual camera on the back, which consists of a 50.1 Mpx main sensor (you know it from the Pixel 8 Pro) and a 12.5 Mpx wide-angle lens with a very wide field of view of 126°. Honestly, both cameras give absolutely great results. Just look at the gallery.

The quality is flawless when taking pictures during the day, that was to be expected. However, the Pixel maintains its role as an excellent camera also in the case of night pictures, macro pictures or my favorite portraits. Speaking of which, the excellent 10Mpx selfie camera is also worth mentioning, which has proven itself both at night and when creating impressive portraits. It’s a shame, however, that a telephoto lens with optical zoom like the Pixel 8 Pro model is missing.

Tip: all test images in full resolution can be found here.

In terms of video, the Pixel is also perfectly versatile. It supports 4K resolution at 24/30/60 fps and Full HD at 24/30/60 fps. If you are patient with maximum stabilization, you must choose the Full HD mode at 30 fps, on the other hand, if you like vivid colors with HDR10+, you can also shoot in 4K, but always only at 30 fps. In addition to classic video, there is also shooting with bokeh, slow motion, time lapse, or special film filters.

Price and availability

The Pixel 8 has been officially sold in the Czech Republic since May 7, in the 8/128 GB variant. Its price from the official Google Store is CZK 20,990, respectively CZK 16,990 for pre-orders on Alza.cz, Datart.cz or with the operator O2. It is available in black, green, beige-pink and blue color variants.

The official pre-order price is great. The standard one is already a little higher than before from unofficial distribution (mostly CZK 18,490), but the customer will also receive a 4,000-dollar credit for the next purchase in the Google store. Another bonus is 3 months of YouTube Premium, Google One subscription and 6 months of Fitbit Premium.