Google Pixel 8 vs Samsung Galaxy S23: the No Pro battle

Google's Pixel 8 lineup is now a few months old, but still the latest handsets from Google. If you've been following the search giant's phone releases, you will feel instantly familiar with them — the new Pixel 8 Pro is the heavy hitter, and its cheaper Pixel 8 equivalent brings the core features at a more manageable price. Well... cheaper by comparison, but surprise surprise — the Pixel 8 costs $100 more than last year's Pixel 7.

Now, it's in the $700 ballpark, and it will be compared to Samsung's Galaxy S23 — it has also been discounted to $700 since the Galaxy S24 series' release. So, we have early 2023 versus late 2023. How do these phones compare to one another and which one should you get? Performance, cameras, displays, and battery life, we tested it all:

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Google Pixel 8 is now on Amazon

The Google Pixel 8 is available at Amazon right now. The smartphone in Obsidian retails at its standard price, with no discounts on the other paintjobs, either.

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The Pixel 8 comes with a 6.2-inch screen and thin bezels — it's slightly smaller than its predecessor, and almost as compact as the Galaxy S23. The latter still wins the one-hand challenge, thanks to its 6.1" screen size.

The Pixel 8 is yet another glass sandwich with an aluminum frame with that distinct horizontal camera bar on the back. While the build materials here are similar, the two phones will look quite different — the Galaxy S23, of course, has the vertical trio of lenses on its back instead.

No curved screens for those models — the arched display corners are only added to the more expensive Pro and Ultra variants nowadays. And also, both of these will have fingerprint scanners embedded in the display.

For biometrics, we have under-screen fingerprint scanners on both, which work similarly quickly and reliably. Also, both phones have face unlock via the selfie cameras, which is typically not considered secure enough. However, Google's machine learning prowess and the new Tensor G3 make the face unlock of the Pixel 8 extremely secure, according to Google — meeting the "highest Android biometric class". Meaning, you will be able to use it to unlock contactless payments through banking apps, as if it were an iPhone with a Face ID array.

The Pixel 8 now has a 120 Hz OLED screen — much like on the Galaxy S23. Though, Google does tune colors slightly differently, and the new Actua Display that the Pixel has produces extremely high peak brightness numbers — 2,000 nits on paper, vs the Galaxy S23's 1,750 nits.

Of course, we have a couple of calibrations and sliders to use to fine-tune how these screens display colors. And blue-light-filtering night mode is now an industry standard.

For the third year in a row, we are seeing Google's Pixel phones be powered by a Google-designed chip. The Tensor series is built with special logic cores, dedicated to handling image processing and Google Assistant AI tasks. However, thus far, the Tensors haven't been much for performance — and the new Tensor G3 doesn't really change that formula.

That is to say, it's not a number cruncher and it's not a benchmarks performer. The good news is that we haven't had a performance problem with the Pixels in day-to-day activities in the past, and the Tensor G3 doesn't disappoint us — not unless we decide to play 3D games or export 4K video edits.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon Gen 2 Made for Galaxy inside the Galaxy S23 series, on the other hand, is an absolute heavy-hitter. We have no doubts that this processor can continue to deliver performance overhead for a few years extra, future-proofing the device.

An important note here — if you are shopping for a Galaxy S23, you certainly should pay the small extra for the upgrade to 256 GB storage. That's because the 256 GB tier comes with UFS 4.0 — a new memory module, which is twice as fast as the UFS 3.1 that's found on the base Galaxy S23 variant... and on any of the Pixel 8 models.

The two phones also differ a lot in software and features. The Pixel line is, of course, the vessel to carry Google's Android with the Google Assistant, Bard, and all the developing AI features. The UI is simple, snappy, and straightforward. The Google Photos app has the exclusive Magic Editor, and will have the new Audio Magic Eraser (cleans out ambient sound from a video) and Best Take (lets you stitch up the perfect group shots from different pictures).

Samsung's One UI is based off of Android, but is a complete reskin of the experience. From the quick toggles, to the transparent overlays, an Edge Panel that you can pull in from the side to launch favorite apps, heavy emphasis on split screen, and exclusive tricks in the Samsung Photos App — it, too, holds an Object Eraser and also has the feature where you can crop a subject out of a photo by tapping and holding on it. But Samsung is not as strong in AI as Google is, so these smart features will lack a bit.

But then, there's the whole Samsung ecosystem. Yes, both these manufacturers have smartwathces and earbuds on offer, but Samsung does also make a plethora of smart home appliances, SmartTags, and the SmartThings hub app is the place you control all of them.

There's a good reason why Samsung's Galaxies have established themselves as "the Android phone", and Samsung's effort with ecosystems, syncing with Windows before other Androids were able to do so, making powerful tablets, all of that has played into this. But we can't say we don't find Google's smart features enticing. For the time being, the Pixel phones feel like geek devices that may be a bit scary to the casual user, but exciting to anyone interested in where AI is going.

Oh, here's the big news — the Google Pixel 8 will be getting Android OS updates for 7 years. That means, it should be supported up to 2030 if all goes well. The Galaxy S23 does have a generous 4-year update promise (until 2027)... but it doesn't sound as impressive as what Google announced at the Pixel 8 event!

The base Pixel has a 50 MP wide and 12 MP ultra-wide camera. It makes up for the lack of a telephoto lens with Google's SuperRes Zoom algorithms... but our experience with the Pixel 7 has shown us that it's not an ideal solution — especially when you want to take Portrait Mode shots with a zoom-in.

The Galaxy S23 comes with a full trio of cameras, covering ultra-wide, wide, and telephoto lenses, and giving you more flexibility. It feels like a full-blown flagship phone, and not one that cut corners for costs.

Of course, that's just us analyzing the specs and what we know so far — here's what they do:

Main Camera - Daytime Photos

Main Camera - Low-light / Night Photos

Zoom Quality

Portrait Mode

Ultra-wide Camera

Selfies

Very similar selfie shots here, but we can see the Galaxy S23 pulling out more details — like wrinkles and other finer bumps — where the Pixel 8 somewhat flattened the whole face.

The Pixel 8 does miss out on a lot of the cool features of the Pixel 8 Pro — like Video Boost or Zoom Enhance, among others. In the end, it might just turn out that it's a slightly improved Pixel 7 camera, which would be a bit of a disappointment, especially with the slight price increase.

Both of these phones have stereo speakers in the familiar setup — bottom driver and earpiece tweeter. The Galaxy S23 sounds ok — a bit muffled and middy, but it doesn't distort. It does kind of OK for music, but is best used for YouTube talking head videos and TikToks if you will.

Same is the case with the Pixel 8 — one can say it sounds a bit weaker, but we wouldn't say it's definitely a worse speaker. It has a mid hump and sufficient volume, so speech comes out good, while music isn't bassy or pumping.

Haptics on both of these phones are quick, responsive, and satisfying.

The Pixel 8 may be a tad smaller than the Pixel 7's, but has a surprisingly big battery, rated at 4,575 mAh. The Galaxy S23 itself doesn't have a gargantuan cell — it has a 3,900 mAh powerpack in the back.

So, with a less power-hungry processor, a bigger battery, and first-party software optimizations by Google itself, the Pixel 8 has a chance to really beat the Galaxy S23 in battery endurance. Does it?

PhoneArena Battery Test Results:

In real life, both phones are quite reliable to last a day. Maybe not if you intend to game too much, but then, would you on those tiny screens? For your regular smartphone tasks, social media, YouTube, mails and chats — they will truck through and still have gas in the tank post sunset.

In terms of charging, they are also expected to be similar. The Galaxy can charge at 25 W tops, and the Pixel 8 can support 27 W on the wire. Wirelessly, the Pixel 8 can charge with a 17 W puck, the Galaxy takes up to 15 W.

The Google Pixel 8 vs Galaxy S23 specs differ in a few key locations — processors, battery, and storage chips:

For the first time in a while, we can't wholeheartedly say that the Pixel is an awesome deal for its asking price. The Pixel 8 costs $700 and cuts out a lot of features that are present on the $1,000 Pixel 8 Pro. On the other hand, the Galaxy S23 starts at $800 (with today's deals — much less), and doesn't really differ that much from the S23+ above it. As long as you spend a little extra to get a 256 GB Galaxy S23, you will be rocking a modern Samsung flagship through and through.

The new Assistant with Bard features of the Pixel 8 will definitely be worth exploring, and the fact that it is guaranteed to get Android OS updates up to 2030 do make this a phone that is... an interesting investment. But overall, when it comes to the Pixel 8 series — we are more of the mind of "Get the Pro or get nothing". With the Galaxy S23, Samsung did a better job of producing a "small flagship".