as a Pixel 4a owner myself, I was caught off-guard a bit that updates were EOL this fall "already"—the past three years have really flown by. While I'd always

as a Pixel 4a owner myself, I was caught off-guard a bit that updates were EOL this fall "already"—the past three years have really flown by. While I'd always previously driven either a pre-owned model or a new, on-production mid-grade, the announcement of the Pixel 8 road map with seven years of updates sealed the deal for me. I went the full monty for the Pixel 8 Pro with 1Tb storage. It is a little big for most of my back pockets when I'm on the go, but since it's very close in dimensions to the Nokia 7.2 that I used prior to the 4a, it's already feeling quite natural in the hand. And having the flagship optics package is pretty cool; something I'd always given up with the previous scheme. But if the SLA had just been four or even five years I don't think I would have made the same choice. (And don't even get me started on how the non-flagships have crap options for storage: 256Gb is not enough for active mobile users, but that's usually the cap unless you pop for the flagship. Grr.