Pixel 8 Series Gets Tiny Battery Buff in Charging and Capacity

Should a friend or family member ask me for a phone recommendation these days, I don’t typically have a standard suggestion each time. Depending on price, carrier, preference of retailer, use cases, and specific needs all factor in to which direction I might point them in. There have been years where it was easy to say, “Go get a Google Pixel phone,” but for most of this year, I’ve actually leaned into suggesting the Galaxy S23 series. The reason? Battery life.

As good as Google’s phones are at taking pictures, and as much as I love the software, Pixel phones have pretty garbage power efficiency, likely from the Tensor chips they switched to. So I ask people how important battery life is and their answer to that is the key in which phone to recommend.

For the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro, Google is apparently giving each new phone a slight battery increase and also increasing the charging speeds. The report comes from Android Authority. According to their source inside Google, the battery capacities will increase to the following in the Pixel 8 series:

• Pixel 8 Battery: 4,485mAh (24W charging)
• Pixel 8 Pro Battery: 4,950mAh (27W charging)

The Pixel 7 featured a 4,270mAh and the Pixel 7 Pro had a 4,926mAh, so the differences here are pretty tiny. I’m not sure we can really call these increases of any significance, but hey, we’ll take what we can get. As for charging, we had 20W in the Pixel 7 and 23W in the Pixel 7 Pro, so again, not huge jumps. For wireless charging, the speeds will apparently remain the same in the Pixel 8 line.

This report also suggests we’ll se WiFi 7 support, UWB remain a Pixel 8 Pro exclusive, and the possibility of Google selling the Pixel line in new countries starting with these phones.

Is it weird that I’m mostly just excited about those new rounded corners?