Google·phone
Pixel 8 Pro
Based on 63 credible posts from Bluesky & Hacker News. 2 filtered out as bot-like or off-topic.
High confidenceA large sample of owners; this score is stable. How we score
Scored September 27, 2026
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Owner reviews
Overall owner mood
Owners are split: 41% of 63 reviews are positive, 27% negative, and the rest mixed or neutral. Praise centers on camera and build & durability. The most common complaint is software & ai (7 owners). Owners with 6+ months of use feel about the same (50% positive).
What owners like
Camera praised by 5 owners
“Short version: Great cameras!”
Build & durability praised by 2 owners
“They had a wide variety of features and build quality.”
What owners complain about
Software & AI raised by 7 owners
“The amount of bugs for such an expensive product is mind boggling.”
Performance raised by 5 owners
“i switched back to samsung after experiencing terrible performance of the tensor chip in the product.”
Camera raised by 4 owners
“One of main features is the camera but I've found myself taking far fewer photos with the phone than I expected I would, mainly because the camera UX just kind of sucks in a 100 small to medium ways that add up to an unpleasant experience.”
Battery & charging raised by 4 owners
“Lets say 10W, which is silly high (most can only charge at around 20W for an hour and a charge lasts at least 12 hours, but lets just take a high number.) At 10W constant draw it would consume 87,600Wh per year.”
What owners talk about
- Software & AI3 praise · 7 complain
- Camera5 praise · 4 complain
- Price & value2 praise · 3 complain
- Battery & charging1 praise · 4 complain
- Performance0 praise · 5 complain
- Connectivity0 praise · 3 complain
- Controls & input1 praise · 1 complain
- Build & durability2 praise · 0 complain
Built from the reviews themselves — every quote links to the owner who wrote it.
Full text of every credible post we scored. Bot-like and off-topic comments are hidden.
Huawei as well. Used to have a P30 Pro. It felt like a true downgrade when I bought a Pixel 8 Pro two years ago and it had no desktop mode and a worse camera to boot.
This year I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.
I had to replace my old phone a few months back and I went with a used Pixel 8 pro from Backmarket specifically so I could try GrapheneOS. I'll never go back if I can help it. I love this OS.
This is a security patch which is different from the QPR1 release. Supposedly once they partner with an OEM they will get more reliable access which would be nice, but I'm hesitant. I switched my Pixel 8 Pro to Graphene a few months ago and really like it.
I bought a Moaan Plus to see if it would work for me - basically, is a phone-sized eInk ebook reader something I'd keep using? [...] Although it's just slightly smaller than my Pixel 8 Pro, it feels close to weightless. [...] Battery life is fine - given how I use it, I drop it on a charger for a few minutes each day and it never goes flat. No idea how many days the battery would last if I didn't do that, but I don't use it the same way as I use my 7" ebook reader so it's not a concern. Similarly although it's notionally an Android tablet, I don't think it would work as a replacement for a typical tablet or phone. FWIW, I currently have 700+ apps installed on my Pixel 8 Pro, and just 6 on the Moaan Plus: - F-Droid (essentially a replacement for the Google Play store) - KOReader, which meets all my reading needs in combination with Calibre on laptop and Wallabag - Koofr, so I can access all my ebooks whenever I can sync via an Internet connection - Markor, for capturing notes in Markdown - DuckDuckGo, because eventually I'll need a browser at some point - Simple Keyboard, to replace the supplied Chinese keyboard app which is useless to me Downsides of the device: - it's Android 11, which may or may not be a concern for you (given how I use it, it's not a concern for me) - no Google Play, so you're going to have to install software from somewhere else. [...]
[...] I used it for 5 years before I got a Samsung Galaxy S2. [...] I used the One Plus 5 for 7 years until I replaced it with a Pixel 8 Pro. [...]
I've been using the older (non-stand) version for a few years now and it's worked great. Saves my pinky from having to support my big honkin' Pixel 8 Pro and makes it much easier for one-handed use
I've been using Graphene on a Pixel 8 Pro for about a year and a half. I'm comfortable with tech but not a big-time geek. [...]
[...] Dropped my Pixel 8 pro into the toilet and the water resistance failed. My phone has completely shorted out and won't power on after letting it dry out for 8 hours. Short of some kind of miracle happening, I've just lost two years of photos with no backup -- No ricky pics for a bit 😿
Interesting, I also have a pixel 8 pro, and my photos often look better to me than my friend's iPhone. Not sure what phone he has though, it might be an older one (though P8Pro isn't exactly bleeding edge anymore either).
I have a Pixel 8 pro, last year I went to NYC with a friend who had an iPhone. [...] I'm sorry to say, but when it comes to photos and videos I think the iphone is now much better than the pixel phones. [...]
[...] I’ve had a Pixel 8 Pro and was considering the upcoming 11. [...] Especially if I also switch my higher quality camera image needs to a real camera. [...]
[...] I had to set my phone screen to stay on for 30 minutes and then leave the web browser open without touching it. [...] I'm on a pixel 8 pro with grapheneos. [...] I don't think it runs out of ram, the system is just too trigger happy. The battery still doesn't last all day anyway.
I use it on my Pixel 8 Pro too It's a toggle in Developer options, Local Desktop.
I used a different app on a Pixel 8 Pro and it worked well. It uses the same principle.
[...] They had a wide variety of features and build quality. Some were cheap but some, like the one I chose, felt quite premium, had all the latest features (in some cases better than the Pixel), etc. It eventually got replaced by a Pixel 8 Pro but I would try it again. [...] There also seems to be this weird anti-China sentiment that appears whenever these phones come up and I think it'd be a more interesting discussion if we focused on the hardware/software instead of country of origin (not saying that that's the case here, it's just been my experience in the past).
[...] Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Drive, Maps, Keep, Photos, YouTube, FitBit, Android. [...] It's a great replacement for my main use case of Docs / Keep which is just a dumping ground for ideas. For Google Photos, I now self-host Immich in Hetzner on a VPS with a 1TB storage box mounted via SSHFS. [...] It took a few days to use Google Takeout + immich-go to upload all the photos (300GB of data) but it's working really well now. [...] Android I think I'll be stuck on - I have a Pixel 8 Pro that technically supports Graphene but there are too many trade-offs there. Next time I need a new phone I'll take a serious look at Fairphone but I think the Pixel 8 Pro should last a few more years. [...] I have yet to find a suitable replacement for Google Maps - OpenStreetMap is still really hard to use and gives bad directions.
[...] I have done exactly that with my Pixel 8 Pro. [...]
[...] It gets hotter quicker when doing more demanding tasks, battery drains faster if network conditions are not perfect, etc. We've been having some warm weather (30ºC) around here and the other day my Pixel 8 Pro started warning me about the phone being too hot when I tried to record a video. [...]
[...] Lets say 10W, which is silly high (most can only charge at around 20W for an hour and a charge lasts at least 12 hours, but lets just take a high number.) At 10W constant draw it would consume 87,600Wh per year. [...] (That's about $11/yr of electricity where I live, about 3 cents per day but this isn't my point.) (For reference, my Pixel 8 Pro gets 16+ hours on average if I don't put it on my wireless charger, and it's battery is only 5000mAh, which my calculations say is around 1W of average draw. This matches what I see on the display on my charging cord.) An average person in Norway consumes 24000kWh per year (according to wikipedia. [...]
[...] An easy example is how they ban any mention of GrapheneOS or LinageOS both the only sane option to pick for a pixel phone (I run Graphene on my Pixel 8 Pro).
I still can't use the "summarize" feature that was used in marketing to sell the Pixel 8 Pro. Not holding my breath on ever being able to use this, either.
Dunno, I have a Pixel 8 Pro, battery lasts all day unless I play demanding games (which nowadays is never).
I recently put my backup strategy to the test upgrading from Lineageos 20/Android 13 on a Oneplus 8pro to Lineageos 21/Android 14 on a Pixel 8pro, so can claim it works - mostly. [...] (Business Calendar is my preferred calendar app currently - although I believe they may have switched to a subscription model since I bought it.) Messages and call logs are backed up by Swift Backup (more on that below). [...] I use Foldersync to do a two-way sync of photos (the DCIM folder, and other photo folders) between my phone and the NAS via SFTP, when on the home wifi. [...] Unfortunately it appears to no longer be maintained as the last update in the Play store was 2019 and it definitely does not work with Android 13 and later. [...] The backup files for all three are sent to my NAS via Foldersync just like photos. [...]
And there is still no BLE replacement for Garmin "Tempe" sensor: no ultra-small rugged temperature sensor on the market (or I cannot find one! [...] My old Xiaomi Mi A1 supported ANT+ till some major update, my next phone (Samsung A72) didn't support it from the beginning, my current Pixel 8 Pro doesn't support it too. [...]
I'm using stock Android, Pixel 8 Pro. [...] Here you can edit the text and save it, updating the value in the clipboard. [...]
Does the launcher still steal an enormous amount of screen space at the top of the home screen in order to display the date? [...] Though seriously, just bought a pixel 8 pro for the camera as my cheap Samsung whatever camera took aeons to focus and had garbage image quality. [...] Though what do you expect from company where your work performance is based on feature visibility meaning useless feature creep is all that matters instead of a quality user experience. [...]
[...] I own a Pixel 8 Pro and it is without a doubt the worst phone I have owned in at least a decade. The amount of bugs for such an expensive product is mind boggling. One of main features is the camera but I've found myself taking far fewer photos with the phone than I expected I would, mainly because the camera UX just kind of sucks in a 100 small to medium ways that add up to an unpleasant experience. Just for example: you need to reenable the manual focus slider after ever picture, focus peaking is flawed and impossible to disable, there's a very noticeable lag with the telephoto mode when adjusting the camera, setting are buried in several different menus, and more. [...]
[...] can't imagine using a top flag phone (pixel 8 pro) at the time with sub-optimal performance.
i switched back to samsung after experiencing terrible performance of the tensor chip in Pixel 8 Pro. To be honest, it's probably not their fault though if games/apps are not optimized for that. But I can't wait around, using a flagship phone with sub-optimal performance.
[...] I bought Pixel 8 Pro when it came out, after I had Samsung (never was into iPhone, my wife has those though). [...]
Plus, your phone comes with 7 years of OS and security updates. Way to go, the 7 years of updates was the reason I bought my Pixel 8 Pro
OnePlus used to - until they didn't anymore. OnePlus 8 was excellent. Pixel 8 Pro has the worst mobile reception I've ever had in a phone.
I've had a Pixel 8 Pro since launch day and have had zero issues with it. Really great phone.
Do these phones have an upgrade to the "phone" part? My Pixel 8 Pro keeps dropping networks every few days and takes minutes to reconnect.
I have a pixel 8 pro and a canon r5 and honestly, unless I'm shooting at f2.0 or less, I generally prefer the pixel images. Not to mention they're instantly sharable.
i also got a google pixel 8 pro a few days ago, i threw grapheneos on it and i like it so far. i got it in used condition locally for cheap
[...] I have a Pixel 8 Pro that I bought outright and by god I'm going to use this thing for the full 7 years of promised updates.
Gotta love that the sleep mode on my Pixel 8 Pro just "stops working" every year or so. I have my phone in vibrate mode so at least the nighttime notifications are fairly quiet, but they are loud enough to disturb my sleep. Why can't this simple feature just work?
[...] My first smartphone was a used iPhone 4S that I bought in 2015 because "job requires it" yet wouldn't issue company phones to us. [...] I opted for a used Pixel 8 Pro for my current phone because it was one of the few remaining ones I could load a custom OS onto.
A few references for the future; roll: Rollei Infrared/Minolta Maxxum. Maumee River, storms in St Clair County, Unadilla, Gregory, Pinkney, Romeo, Williamston All reference shots are with my phone: Google Pixel 8 Pro. I'm looking forward to these!
So I made the switch from android (pixel 8 pro) to iPhone (17PM) I haven’t had an iPhone since the iPhone 5 and it’s been a smooth experience I’ve had so many pictures and videos and took so much space of my phone storage and my solution was a usb c to usb and a usb stick just plug and transfer
I've posted a review of the Pixel 8 Pro, which I got a couple of weeks ago. Short version: Great cameras! [...]
I was on Pixels since the first generation, and only I recently switched from the Pixel 8 Pro to the OnePlus 15, so I was very late to the game here and missed the peak OnePlus days. [...] Only thing I miss is the camera quality of the Pixel. [...]
Maybe I just expect too much battery life, but I find that I get quite low or even run out when I limit charging to 80%. My feeling is that the coulomb counting on the Pixel 8 Pro is just not very accurate, so the phone thinks it's at 80%, but is really at 60% or 40%. [...] I suppose rationally I should just charge to 100% rather than take a medicine that causes the same side effect as the disease its meant to treat, but I'm not that rational.
I still have an old Anker 20,000 mAh power bank that works fine. Might not have the same charge ability as it once had but I can still get 2-3 charges out of it for a Pixel 8 Pro. Has 4 LED's to display charge level and a button that flashes them when you want to check status. I bought a UGREEN bank on a recommendation and it was a buggy mess. It discharged more than it should when charging and when plugged in it rapidly charged to 100% which was sus. Graphical menu was weird and displayed ambiguous graphic messages to avoid text. [...]
Well, for one I do a lot of Photography with my phone because I enjoy the flexibility and portability of it. I do have a good camera but when you're out and about its still too big for my liking. Most importantly, phones now a days come with a roughly 100mm equivalent and thats kind of my favorite lens for street photography (weird, I know, I enjoy taking close up photos of buildings, signs, cars). Another reason why i like phone photography is how quickly i can share my pictures with the people i care. I don't really care for posting my photos on social media that much I want to send good photos of my travel/life to my friends through chatrooms. So a good camera on a phone is essential to me. Particularly a good telephoto and a good main camera (so like 30-100mm). [...] Of course, I enjoy side loading apps and so as of now I've been relatively happy with something like the pixel 8 pro that I've had for a while. [...]
[...] And so, instead, I've been using Google hardware for years. I think the happiest I was might have been with the Pixel 5a, it was cheap and had a headphone jack and just felt like really good value. Now I'm on the pixel 8 pro and I'm genuinely thinking for my next upgrade to be an iPhone. [...]
I have a Pixel 8 Pro, which is fine, except the GPS takes a very long time to wake up. It is running GrapheneOS, however.
[...] I have a Pixel 8 Pro, but I am not a power user and not in the market for a tablet version of it. Honestly, every Android I've had (even the nVidia Tegra one, and some Pixels) always seem to go slow quite quickly. I'm not fan of Apple per say, but I have the 11 inch iPad Air and it's never been a problem like those were (the NVidia was a massive disappointment for me - it just needed to be a good tablet - and I've had some bad devices, like the Ngage)
Pixel 8 Pro long-term: how it holds up
Satisfaction drops 50 points among owners who've had it 1 year or more.
- First months100% recommend · 3 owners
- 1 year or more50% recommend · 6 owners
When problems show up
- Cameratypically around 2 years · 2 reports
The claims, and the evidence
What the brand claims
No published claims on file for this product yet.
What owners report
“I had to replace my old phone a few months back and I went with a used Pixel 8 pro from Backmarket specifically so I could try GrapheneOS. I'll never go back if I can help it. I love this OS.”
after 3 monthsView on Hacker News“This is a security patch which is different from the QPR1 release. Supposedly once they partner with an OEM they will get more reliable access which would be nice, but I'm hesitant. I switched my Pixel 8 Pro to Graphene a few months ago and really like it.”
after 3 monthsView on Hacker News“Huawei as well. Used to have a P30 Pro. It felt like a true downgrade when I bought a Pixel 8 Pro two years ago and it had no desktop mode and a worse camera to boot.”
after 2 yearsView on Hacker News“This year I've been waiting a year for the summarize AI to (not) make it to my Google Pixel 8 Pro. It should be known that everyone outside of the US get a different product than what is advertised online and reviewed on YouTube.”
after 1 yearView on Hacker News
Common Pixel 8 Pro problems
Issues at least two owners independently report.
- Performance5 mentionsView on Hacker News
“Does the launcher still steal an enormous amount of screen space at the top of the home screen in order to display the date? [...] Though seriously, just bought a pixel 8 pro for the camera as my cheap Samsung whatever camera took aeons to focus and had garbage image quality. [...] Though what do you expect from company where your work performance is based on feature visibility meaning useless feature creep is all that matters instead of a quality user experience. [...]”
- Software & AI7 mentionsView on Hacker News
“And there is still no BLE replacement for Garmin "Tempe" sensor: no ultra-small rugged temperature sensor on the market (or I cannot find one! [...] My old Xiaomi Mi A1 supported ANT+ till some major update, my next phone (Samsung A72) didn't support it from the beginning, my current Pixel 8 Pro doesn't support it too. [...]”
- Battery & charging4 mentionsView on Hacker News
“[...] I had to set my phone screen to stay on for 30 minutes and then leave the web browser open without touching it. [...] I'm on a pixel 8 pro with grapheneos. [...] I don't think it runs out of ram, the system is just too trigger happy. The battery still doesn't last all day anyway.”
- Connectivity3 mentionsView on Hacker News
“OnePlus used to - until they didn't anymore. OnePlus 8 was excellent. Pixel 8 Pro has the worst mobile reception I've ever had in a phone.”
- Display2 mentionsView on Hacker News
“Does the launcher still steal an enormous amount of screen space at the top of the home screen in order to display the date? [...] Though seriously, just bought a pixel 8 pro for the camera as my cheap Samsung whatever camera took aeons to focus and had garbage image quality. [...] Though what do you expect from company where your work performance is based on feature visibility meaning useless feature creep is all that matters instead of a quality user experience. [...]”
- Customer support2 mentionsView on Hacker News
“And there is still no BLE replacement for Garmin "Tempe" sensor: no ultra-small rugged temperature sensor on the market (or I cannot find one! [...] My old Xiaomi Mi A1 supported ANT+ till some major update, my next phone (Samsung A72) didn't support it from the beginning, my current Pixel 8 Pro doesn't support it too. [...]”