The News: Google revealed its new Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 smartphones at its annual Made By Google event hosted at Pier 57 in New York City. The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro are Google’s opportunity to showcase its new Tensor G3 system on chip (SOC) AI-forward features and finally allow the Pixel’s Pro model to compete in the premium handset tier. Read the full press release on the Google website.
Google Tensor G3 SOC Elevates Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro Performance
Analyst Take: At first glance, Google’s Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro do not look like significant upgrades from the 7 series, but they are. Google’s new Tensor G3 SOC brings noticeable performance and feature upgrades to Pixel’s 8th generation of smartphones, and signal that Google might finally be getting a bit more serious about its smartphone prospects.
For starters, Tensor G3 looks like a more significant upgrade from Tensor 2 than Tensor 2 was from the first Tensor. Overall, SOC specs look like a Cortex-X3 main core, four Cortex-A715 cores, and four Cortex-A510 cores. That is some solid hardware that looks very much in line with Android’s premium tier, which is where Pixel flagship models should be competing. I feel that both Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8 will be more appropriately positioned against their competitors than previous iterations have been. As a fairly loyal Pixel user myself, it is good to see Pixel no longer has to punch above its weight for a change. (You might remember that even when Pixels used to be powered by Snapdragon SOCs before Tensor came along, the product team did not go full premium with its feature sets. As far as I can tell, this release is the first time that Pixel is releasing a phone with a legitimately competitive flagship-level SOC.)
It is a bit too soon to tell, but I suspect that in the real world, not just on paper and in controlled, narrow benchmark tests, Tensor G3 might be a more 1:1 contender to MediaTek’s Dimensity 9200 than to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Having said that, as both Qualcomm and MediaTek are expected to release their next generations of flagship SOCs later this month (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Dimensity 9300, respectively), the timing of Google’s Tensor G3’s big debut in the Pixel 8 Pro feels like it might be half a step behind. I would like to see better alignment across the premium SOC release schedule in the future, with Qualcomm, MediaTek, and Google releasing their flagship SOCs closer together so that we can actually compare them against each other instead of looking backward to what are essentially last year’s iterations. If Google wants to truly compete in the premium handset SOC space, it might require a slight release schedule adjustment that allows for a more contemporaneous SOC comparison across all three brands.
That said, Tensor G3’s upgrades legitimately elevate it into Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 territory, and that is something to be celebrated both for the Pixel product team and for android users looking to upgrade to Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro. What I am most excited about with Tensor G3 is how it is likely to have enabled the Pixel product teams to prioritize AI-enabled features — the biggest trend in device features this year, rivaling the usual category-wide emphasis on camera performance. Given Google’s leadership in the on-device AI space, I feel that here is where Tensor’s future generations might help create increasingly clear market differentiation for the Pixel brand. As solid as Qualcomm’s Snapdragon platform already is at enabling AI features on Snapdragon-powered devices, this is Google’s opportunity to overtake MediaTek, at least in the North American market, and give Snapdragon a run for its money.
One additional thing I noticed about Pixel 8 is that its new slightly smaller 6.2-inch Actua display is reportedly 42% brighter than its predecessor. This improvement is very welcome. As any Pixel user will tell you, Pixel screens have traditionally struggled in prolonged direct sunlight. Fixing this annoying user experience (UX) problem goes a long way to making the Pixel more usable in bright outdoor settings, particularly in the summer months. (Think beach and pool.) The screen also delivers adaptive refresh rates ranging from 60 Hz to 120 Hz, while the Pixel 8 Pro’s 6.7-inch high-resolution Super Actua display, for its part, delivers 489 pixels per inch with refresh rates ranging from 1 Hz to 120 Hz.
Camera Upgrades
Let us talk about cameras, because cameras are where Pixel tends to differentiate itself from other handsets. Every camera on the Pixel 8 Pro scored an upgrade this year, starting with the main camera. Google checks all the right boxes here, with enhanced low-light photos and videos (which Pixel has already been pretty solid on), a bigger ultrawide lens (48 megapixels) for improved macro focus (30% closer than Pixel 7 Pro) with more aggressive bokeh, 56% more light and 10x photos at optical quality for the telephoto lens, smoother autofocus for the front-facing camera, and autofocus for the selfie camera. Both phones feature the same flagship 50-megapixel main camera, with 21% more light sensitivity than the Pixel 7 series (improving low-light photo and video quality and improving autofocus in low-light settings). Pixel 8’s ultrawide camera now also features autofocus.
Overall, the camera app’s redesigned interface looks more intuitive, but for more proactive users, Pixel 8 Pro’s Pro Controls provides more “pro” settings such as shutter speed and ISO, and even unlocks 50 MP photos for the full zoom range.
Dual Exposure, which effectively takes two images simultaneously — one optimized for low-light and the other for a higher dynamic range – to create a single optimally lit image, is available on the new main camera in Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
Google also introduced Best Take, a feature that uses an on-device algorithm to create a blended image from several similar photos. (If you have ever tried to take a group photo only to discover later that someone blinked or made a face, you will know how useful this feature is.) Another new feature is Magic Editor (in Google Photos), which uses generative AI to help users easily reposition and resize objects and people (or use presets to enhance backgrounds). These are clever use cases for on-device AI, and great examples of Pixel’s approach to camera intelligence, which has already delivered the ability to erase people and objects out of photos and fix contrast issues when photographing different skin tones in a broad range of lighting situations.
Guided Frame is another very cool feature that uses a combination of audio cues, high-contrast animations, and haptic (tactile) feedback to help users with vision challenges to take photos. The feature now works on front and rear cameras, and recognizes more than just human faces, giving users a broader range of photographic options. I really like how the Pixel product team systematically finds ways of making its UX more inclusive. I wish this were more of a priority across the mobile space.
Real Tone (the feature that more accurately represents all human skin tones in photos and videos) is also back with some upgrades. This year, Google upgraded its flash with Night Sight intelligence to make darker skin tones look more natural in flash-lit photos and added the feature to video.
Speaking of video, as impressive as Pixel’s camera game is, video is one area where the product family could make improvements (especially against iPhone). Let me explain: I still feel that iPhone produces better video than Android, including Pixel. Conversely, Android (and Pixel in particular) tends to produce better photo quality than iPhones. I don’t think that is a particularly controversial observation, but if you feel strongly enough about it, please feel free to leave a comment.
Perhaps as a way to help bridge the Android-iPhone gap for video quality and features, the Pixel team introduced Audio Magic Eraser, a new feature that lets users easily reduce distracting sounds in video (like the hissing and popping of wind and the din of crowds). Although this feature does not do a whole lot to improve video quality, it does improve the quality of videos, and yes, that is extremely important. Talk to any content creator or video producer, and they will tell you that sound quality is generally far more important to video content than image quality. You could have the prettiest, most perfect video ever produced, but if your sound quality is off, the picture will not matter. Conversely, decent video quality with perfect sound will feel like highly produced content.
Per Google, this first-of-its-kind computational audio capability uses advanced machine learning (ML) models to sort sounds into distinct layers so that users can control their levels. I like this feature a lot and feel that it is yet another example of the Pixel team’s refreshingly holistic approach to device feature innovation: rather than merely trying to improve the performance of existing features, the Pixel team seems to always be looking for new ways to improve the overall UX, bring new features to their devices, and leverage these innovations as clear market differentiators.
Google also announced that Pixel 8 Pro will soon get Video Boost, which pairs the Tensor G3 chipset with Google’s own data centers to allow users to apply additional high-end processing to their videos (color, lighting, stabilization, and graininess enhancements, as well as access to Night Sight video).
Non-Camera AI-Enhanced Features
Through its new Summarize feature, Pixel can now generate webpage summaries to quickly get to the key points it contains. Pixel will even be able to read content aloud and translate webpages to allow users to listen to articles on the go and make content more accessible. Although I love the feature for fully able users, I expect this feature to make Pixel a lot friendlier and valuable for users with disabilities.
To that point, Pixel keeps getting better at understanding natural human speech in all of its nuances. If a user pauses or interjects “um” and “uh” between words, the interface will wait before responding. Along the same vein, Pixel’s voice-to-text typing, editing, and sending messages is getting a lot slicker and faster.
As a Pixel user, one of my favorite features is call screening, which silently answers calls from unknown numbers to determine if they are spam. Google reports 50% fewer spam calls on average compared with previous versions. Call Screen will also soon enable a contextual reply suggestion feature that will allow users to respond to calls with a single tap (to confirm an appointment, for example). Thanks to a more natural voice interface, the AI-enabled response will sound far less artificial to the person making the call.
Google’s Titan M2 security chip and Face Unlock also add new layers of on-device security to protect personal information and make Pixel more resistant to sophisticated attacks.
As an aside, one of the Pixel 8 Pro’s more interesting addons is a temperature sensor that lets users scan an object to measure its temperature. Google suggests that users can now check if their cookware is hot enough to start cooking, ensure that the milk in a baby’s bottle is at the right temperature, or use the device’s thermometer app to take their temperature and save it to Fitbit. To be honest, this feature feels like a solution in search of a problem, and I cannot help but feel that Google could have skipped the extra feature to save on cost and hardware real estate here.
Also noteworthy is that both devices will receive 7 years of software updates, including Android OS upgrades, security updates, and regular feature drops, which speaks to the shift in product lifecycle models in the handset segment. Providing 6 to 7 years of support for devices was overdue, and Google made the right move with this value-add.
Overall, the Pixel 8 Pro and Pixel 8 release feels like Google is finally committed to expanding its Pixel lineup from its B+/A- best-price-to-performance ratio and best-camera-for-the-money value propositions into the premium tier, where it should have been competing all along. This move is not just good for Google and locked-in Pixel users, I also feel that it is good for the smartphone market as a whole, especially in the North American market, where competition in Android’s premium tier has remained somewhat limited for too long. More competition forces handset OEMs to find ways to create more value through performance and feature differentiation, which fuels UX, design, software, and hardware innovation. I do not want to get ahead of myself and predict that a boost in competition in the premium tier will necessarily re-energize purchase cycles to pre-COVID levels, but giving consumers exciting reasons to upgrade their phones more often (delivering exciting new feature sets instead of settling for 10%-30% improvements in performance) certainly cannot hurt.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Olivier Blanchard has extensive experience managing product innovation, technology adoption, digital integration, and change management for industry leaders in the B2B, B2C, B2G sectors, and the IT channel. His passion is helping decision-makers and their organizations understand the many risks and opportunities of technology-driven disruption, and leverage innovation to build stronger, better, more competitive companies. Read Full Bio.
