22 Months With the Pixel 8 Before the Pixel, there was a Xiaomi Mi 8. A phone that was never officially launched in India, which meant every update, every fix, every feature was something I had to go looking for myself. At some point I got tired of that and flashed Pixel Experience ROM onto it, basically a custom Android build that mimics the actual Pixel software. It worked better than it had any right to. Clean UI, none of the MIUI bloat, and for the first time I understood why people liked stock Android so much. Then the phone died. Not software, not a slow decline, just physical damage. And when it came time to replace it, the decision made itself. If a fake Pixel experience had been this good, the real one was the obvious next step. I bought the Pixel 8 in October 2024 for 32k. Within a few months the price had climbed to 43k, and later into the high 50s. At the time, 32k felt like a genuinely good deal. In hindsight, it was a great deal. Whether it still is one, at today...