When the Pixel 8 was first announced, it was the most excited I’d been about a Google phone in quite some time. After a brief defection to the dark side (i.e., the iPhone 13), I was more than ready to come back into the Android fold. I was enticed by the more compact size, more comfortable rounded corners, and higher refresh rate screen compared to the last couple of Pixels. I was also hopeful that Google had fixed my main gripe from the Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 — the inconsistent fingerprint scanner.
Prior to the big design refresh that came with the Pixel 6, we were blessed with excellent rear-mounted fingerprint sensors on both Pixel and Nexus phones (ignoring the Pixel 4’s short-lived face ID experiment). Along with the now iconic horizontal camera bar, the Pixel 6 also introduced the series’ first under-display fingerprint reader. Even though Google was slower to jump on this feature than other manufacturers, it still failed to live up to the hype. It’s unclear if this was due to inferior hardware or poor optimization on Google’s part (or a mixture of both). Either way, what we got was a slow and unpredictable unlocking experience that caused no end of frustration to users, including many in our ranks here at Android Authority.