Pixel 8 Pro 265Gb here.

Right now, it’s a love/hate relationship:

I love the camera, display, software, haptic feedback, build, design, sound, call quality (seriously, I can use speakerphone without the other side even noticing that I’m doing so, wow!) and the face unlock during the day - when it’s bright enough, it’s almost magical. All really, really great things.

I’m fine with the performance (coming from an older Snapdragon 865 it surprisingly doesn’t feel like a notable uplift, but it’s good enough, and the most demanding game I play mobile is the NYT crossword), the fingerprint scanner is a little worse than on my old Xiaomi/Poco midranger and, I believe/hope, currently hampered by a bug where it doesn’t reliably trigger from AOD, which probably is the reason why it’s only just “ok” for me overall. Battery life on wifi is fine, albeit surprisingly a bit worse than on my three-year-old phone with its 4700mAh and identically sized display. Reception is fine, no complaints there.

I’m a bit miffed that some of the more interesting AI features are US-only, but what is there in the EU is still mostly nice and useful. Bluetooth is a bit weak, I had some connection issues with my Sony in-ears that I never had before.

I hate, hate, hate the battery life on mobile, especially on 5g. It’s utterly, embarrassingly, awful. How the fuck is it so much worse than on my three-year-old cheap-o phone with its far smaller and slowly dying battery - on the same carrier/5g? Why does it constantly feel warm when on 5g? There’s no way I can use this phone away from a charger for a whole day.

So, yeah, best phone I ever had on wifi. A pretty, but useless, paperweight after a slightly longer day out on mobile. And it’s hard to comprehend why it’s so awful for me, I feel like there must be some kind of explanation or bug.

Literally the only issue I’m having with the phone, but if there’s no solution to this, it may turn out to be a dealbreaker.