Google Pixel 8 release date, price, specs, colors and latest news

After months of official and unofficial Pixel 8 leaks, we've finally got the fully-confirmed details of Google's new phone.

Taking the Pixel 7 as its basis, the Pixel 8 has made updates to the phone's body, made the display smoother and brighter, made its cameras more versatile, and stuffed even more AI smarts into its clever Tensor chipset. All this has come with a price increase though, so Google's got to prove the Pixel 8's still good value in the long run.

You can check out our guide to the Pixel 8 Pro if you're interested in the more expensive Pixel 8 model, and our Pixel 8 review and Pixel 8 Pro review if you want to see the phone in use. But here we're going to go over the full Pixel 8 spec sheet to see what's new and what's not with the latest Pixel.

Google Pixel 8 Specs

Google Pixel 8 Price and availability

The Pixel 8 (and the Pixel 8 Pro too) is coming to the U.S., U.K. and Australia among several other countries. It starts at $699, which while cheaper than a Galaxy S23 or iPhone 15, is still $100 more than the Pixel 7 started at. 

Since the Pixel 8 Pro also costs $100 more (starting at $999), the price gap remains the same if you're only looking at Pixel phones. But a price hike could be a good reason to look at the Pixel 7a instead.

All the same, we have a guide to Pixel 8 pre-orders if you want to call dibs on a handset ASAP.

Google Pixel 8 Design and display

You may not notice at first glance, but the Pixel 8 has a revised design. It's still looking distinctly Pixel-y but with a rounder look and matte-textured metal side rails and glossy back glass, it's distinct from the Pixel 7.

Keeping this attractive phone safe is an IP68 water/dust resistance rating and a Gorilla Glass Victus display. It's a shame the screen's not clad in the newer GG Victus 2 like the Pro model, but that's still pretty strong.

For colors, Google's offering Hazel, Rose and Obsidian, or green, peach-pink and black in normal terms. 

As for the screen of the phone, it's a 6.2-inch FHD Actua display, Actua referring to Google's new brightness technology that gives the Pixel 8 a 2,000-nit peak brightness rating. The panel's a bit smaller than the Pixel 7's 6.3-inch panel, but it does get a bump from a 90Hz maximum refresh rate to 120Hz. The refresh rate is not fully adaptive like the Pixel 8 Pro's display though, with a minimum refresh rate of 60Hz rather than 1Hz, which means it's slightly less efficient when showing still images.

A teardown of the Pixel 8 has revealed an underlying design similar to the Pixel 7. While that's not surprising given how much the two devices resemble each other, it does unfortunately mean the new Pixel inherited some less-than-desirable traits, such as minimal cooling tech.

Google Pixel 8 Cameras

Once again, Google's new basic Pixel flagship offers two rear cameras. For the Pixel 8, these are a 50MP main camera with up to 8x "SuperRes" digital zoom, and a 12MP ultrawide camera with added Macro Focus mode for close-up shots. There's also a new 10.5MP selfie camera on the front.

Google Pixel family's photography prowess relies as much on software as hardware, and software is indeed where we see big strides. New to the Pixel 8 is Best Take, which stitches multiple images together to make sure everything and everyone looks their best, as is Audio Magic Eraser to clear up video audio, and the Magic Editor for powerful machine learning-enhanced image tweaking. Don't worry though, older features like Photo Unblur and Magic Eraser are here too.

Google Pixel 8 Performance

You'll find the Tensor G3 chipset, with 8GB RAM and either 128GB or 256GB storage, running the Pixel 8 if you were to open it up. The Tensor's aimed more at providing amazing-sounding AI than raw power, with abilities like improved Call Screen feature to block more spammers, improved image processing and clearer voice calls.

There are even more toys to play with when you factor in Google Assistant, which can read, summarize or translate web pages or let you dictate messages even faster with the Tensor G3's improved abilities.

Google Pixel 8 Battery

Google promises "all-day" battery life from the 4,575 mAh capacity inside the Pixel 8. We'd take this claim with a pinch of salt though as in our testing, Pixels offer some of the worst battery life of any flagship phone we've tested. Hopefully it's at least an improvement on previous Pixels, if not better than rival phones.

The Pixel 8 supports 27W wired charging as well as wireless charging. That's a touch faster than the 23W of the Pixel 7, but Google's still promising a 50% refill in 30 minutes.

Google Pixel 8 Software

Google's launching the Pixel 8 with Android 14, the latest version of Android. It'll stay on the latest version for some time too, as Google has pledge to provide the Pixel 8 with seven years of full software updates, the longest promised for any smartphone on the market right now. This could offer the Pixel 8 some serious value long-term if you're willing to forgo upgrading.

Google has also confirmed that lossless USB audio support will be coming to to Pixel 8 series as part of a future update — in part thanks to support being included with the Android 14 OS.

Google Pixel 8 Outlook

You can take a look at our Pixel 8 hands-on for our initial thoughts after some time trying the phone out, but going by the specs alone, Google's done a good job of keeping the Pixel 8 as a great value phone despite the price increasing by $100.

We're particularly interested in what the new AI-powered photo editing and productivity tools can do for a user's average daily smartphone tasks. But we are keen to see if the addition of a smoother and brighter display and other small hardware bumps make a significant difference to the Pixel experience too, and if it's a worthwhile intermediate step between the great value Pixel 7a and the fully-featured Pixel 8 Pro. And when we've given it all a thorough testing, we'll be sure to share our results with you.