Google Slips Up And Teases Image Of Its Upcoming Pixel 8 Pro

Google is not known for its ability to keep secrets. The search giant's plans leak quite often, and it can't keep a new product under wraps to save its proverbial life it seems. Some of its past smartphones have even ended up for sale online months ahead of their debut. The upcoming Pixel 8 Pro isn't popping up on eBay, but it has made an appearance in a graphic on the Google Store. Behold, the Pixel 8 Pro in Porcelain (seen above).

The image in question was posted briefly on the "Google Subscriptions & Services" page of the store. How do we know this is a Pixel 8 Pro? For one, just look at it. A keen observer will note that this phone has a heretofore unofficial camera visor design. The visor is metal, with a long oval window for the phone's three camera sensors, which we saw in an earlier render leak. The Pixel 7 Pro sported a separate round window for the telephoto camera, and the Pixel 6 Pro didn't have metal surrounding the cameras.

There's also the matter of the image's alt text, which reads "a person takes a call on a Pixel 8 Pro phone in Porcelain." Oops. Despite that label, it's pretty obvious what happened. Some poor marketing employee was building the store page and grabbed the wrong image from a media library. It would have been harder to make that mistake back when every generation of Pixel phone looked totally different, but the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and now Pixel 8 all look somewhat similar. You'd have to be intimately familiar with the hardware to tell them apart at a glance. Thankfully, people like Android aficionado Mishaal Rahman can do that.

Here's a look at the Google Pixel 8 Pro in Porcelain.

This image is from the Google Store website, which inadvertently published this image early in the promo page for "Google Subscriptions & Services".

Thanks to @android_setting for the tip! pic.twitter.com/nARd4Hz8hk

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) August 30, 2023

The person in the image is also wearing a smartwatch. While it's impossible to tell from the angle, it's possible that's a Pixel Watch 2. Google is expected to announce the new watch alongside the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro in a few months, so it would be strange to shoot promo images with the new phone and an old watch. It does look slightly flatter and thinner than the current watch, but that could simply be the angle of the photo.

The Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro will be the third generation of Google's Tensor-powered Pixels, and they might have even better update support and a brighter display. While the Tensor chip doesn't quite keep up with the latest Qualcomm designs in terms of raw speed, the Tensor Pixels have been a huge step up from older models. Pricing is still anyone's guess, but the current Pixel sell for $600 (Pixel 7) and $900 (Pixel 7 Pro). The price did not increase from the Pixel 6 to Pixel 7, so it would not be crazy to expect the same for the Pixel 8.