It's alive!

Some of the leaked marketing shots:

The ad shows Google’s new mid-range device in blue and off-white color variants, and it’s abundantly clear that it is the Pixel 8a. For one, the device in question has two cameras and a blue color, something the standard Pixel 8 wouldn’t fit. It’s also lacking a microphone near the cameras.

The ad in question:

In case some of you want to take pictures tomorrow 😁

From the release notes, it provides the following fixes:

• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused a device to crash or restart unexpectedly.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused a device to crash or restart unexpectedly while updating apps after the device was flashed.
• Fixed issues that caused a device to display a blank, black screen after booting from flash.
• Fixed an issue that caused a device to crash and display a blank, black screen after switching to a secondary user.
• Fixed issues when always-on display mode was enabled that interfered with the "Double tap to wake" gesture and prevented the device from unlocking if the user tried to use their fingerprint to unlock the device.
• Fixed an issue that sometimes caused battery information to not display correctly in the system settings, status bar, and on the lock screen.
• Fixed issues that prevented device-to-device transfers and backup and restore from working.
• Fixed various issues that were impacting system stability, performance, and camera.

The new beta targets the following devices:

• Pixel 5a;
• Pixel 6 and 6 Pro;
• Pixel 6a;
• Pixel 7 and 7 Pro;
• Pixel 7a;
• Pixel Fold;
• Pixel Tablet;
• Pixel 8 and 8 Pro.

Results look disappointing for the Pixel 8 Pro in this test as it lands last for battery life and does a bit better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max in terms of charging speed.

About how they perform their battery life test:

This is done by using a light meter to calibrate their displays to 150 nits, then running a script that simulates web surfing over 5G cellular connectivity. This is done until their batteries are depleted.

Looks like the previous render leak was (unfortunately) spot on about the camera changes.

tl;dr: a testing certificate for a Google phone going by the model name "GH2MB" (similar to those of the Pixel 7a) is suggesting that the Pixel 8a might be getting a 4,942mAh battery. For a comparison, the Pixel 7a has 4,385mAh, the 8 has 4,575mAh and the 8 Pro has 5,050mAh.

This talk assumes no prior knowledge of functional programming.

tl;dr about the expected privacy feature: Pixel owners would be able to quickly see which apps have access to the camera or the microphone.

Screenshots from Android Central:

Just Android Police giving a shout-out to GrapheneOS :-)

(see also our previous thread about GrapheneOS)