My review of the Pixel 8a after four months - disappointed with battery life and heating

[RockSolid1106]

My previous phones have all been low to midrange Samsung phones, riddled with ads and horrible cameras - which is now all much better with the Pixel. They did have however, good battery life, which I now realize after using this phone. My older Samsung, which I only ever charged up to 85% would never dip lower than 25% at EOD, no matter how hard I pushed it. This new Pixel, which does not have the feature to stop charging at 85% and hence is always charged to 100%(UPDATE: apparently it was added after an update! I love that I can now limit it to 80%), will always dip lower than 20% unless I charge it up a little in the day. This is all with 5G on the Samsung and LTE/4G on the Pixel. If I instead switch to WiFi the battery life is better, but that's not what I expect from a midrange phone. I'm disappointed with the battery life. At least the charging speed is half decent so it doesn't take long to charge it up a bit.

Below are my thoughts on the phone. Anything in purple is a con.

 

» The camera is good. I can throw literally any situation at it and trust that it will get a usable to good image for the situation. Night sight does a neat job too and can get usable photos in situations with extremely poor lighting. It does a really good job with skin tones and lighting too. The photos look very natural, quite like the iPhones, and quite unlike the fucking Samsung which completely oversharpens the living shit out of any photo to the point where it's unusable and without the option of capturing RAW so I can edit it myself.

I don't like the Portrait mode however. The edge detection is horrible and makes a bad photo. Anything less than ideal seems to throw off the algorithm completely. I had a photo of a cat sitting with me, and it does not fucking know what to blur and what to not.

The distortion and lens flare is bad IMO. I took a photo of my exam question sheet and it completely distorted one of the edges of the sheet. I haven't heard of many other talk about this though.

I do miss a 2x lens on this phone. It's probably the lens I'd use the most, but I think the Pixel software does a decent job to not make 2x digital zoom photos look crappy.

The video stabilization is quite good too.

 

» The software is good, smooth and fluid animations. I like the clean UI and no marketing shit. There are little bugs though like where I can't expand a gmail notification and while it does occur frequently, it's easy enough to just open the mail itself. With a good amount of time spent now, there's a few bugs here and there like where it will not allow me to interact with my home screen and the only way to fix it would be to lock and then unlock the phone.

I do like how it's quick to use when I'm multitasking. The animations are well timed, neither too long nor too short. On my previous Samsung, I always hated the multitasking menu or whatever it's called that you pull up and hold from the bottom for. It's always had a weird "elasticity" to it so I always overshot or undershot the app that I was trying to get to by swiping. On this Pixel it's not really a problem.

 

» I think it looks quite cute as a small phone and my previous Samsung feels massive. Though I'd have liked smaller bezels, you forget them after using it for a bit. For a lot of people though, this phone will feel a little small.

 

» The display is quite bright. I have never had any problems even in the harshest of lighting conditions.

 

» The speakers are quite good. The earpiece also is a speaker and it does sound good with decent thump. My phone is generally on silent anyway and I use my earphones if I do need to listen to anything.

 

» Sometimes the phone heats up like I'm playing a game, but I'm literally just scrolling through Reddit. Just browsing the web will cause it to heat up to a mildly uncomfortable level in your palm.

 

» Battery life as I've already described above. I do not like it, but over time I've gotten more used to it and know how long it's going to last and when I'll need to charge it up. Still, there's no way this phone can survive a day of me going out with my friends. Maps, photos and videos, high brightness under the sun, cellular all the time and the heat. There's no way it's making even half a day in that, which is quite disappointing.

 

If not for the battery, heating issues and the lack of a 2x lens, I'd have 100% recommended this phone to anyone that asked.

 

Although I've written this over a long time, there might be things that I've missed. I'll answer any questions too.

[PDifolco]

That's why I passed on Pixels, their battery life is the worst

Was pretty happy with my old Oneplus5 then my Nothing 1, but now the battery is 20% dead so it's becoming a pain,  well like a new Pixel  

[porina]

Had an 8a since release. As long as I'm not gaming on the phone I've not had a problem with battery life. It'll survive a day and doesn't get hot. The most usage might be when I'm travelling. Maps, photos, video mainly. Occasional check of social media. Next time it gets warm, check the battery usage report and see which app is doing it. I don't think this is normal.

 

Personally not had a problem with Samsung's camera on my somewhat older S6. Not used anything more recent though. Optical zoom would be nice but I got the 8a because it was cheap. OIS means the camera is usable in realistic lighting situations other than in sunlight. I'd rate that as a mandatory feature.

[dizmo]

Yeah...Pixels are getting there, but they're still not quite where I'd want them to get a req from me, or gain a space in my pocket. Who knows though, rumours are that the 10 is supposed to be a pretty big leap forward, so maybe it'll be my phone upgrade next year.

 

On 3/10/2025 at 12:04 PM, PDifolco said:

That's why I passed on Pixels, their battery life is the worst

Was pretty happy with my old Oneplus5 then my Nothing 1, but now the battery is 20% dead so it's becoming a pain,  well like a new Pixel  

They're getting better iteration to iteration but they've still got a ways to go before they match the big boys for sure. Which is sad, considering it's probably mostly optimization and they should be the best at that given it's their own OS.