Google Pixel 8 Series

The 8 kept the full width camera bar and rounded off the corners compared with the 7. Both changes matter to a case, so nothing from the previous generation fits.

The 8 Pro also has a temperature sensor set into the bar. The cutouts here leave it exposed.

The Pixel 8 is the compact one with two lenses in the bar. The 8 Pro is larger, has three lenses and the temperature sensor set into the same bar.

They do not share a case. The bar sits at a different height on each and the bodies are different lengths.

Lucca is the slim option, with padding behind the phone and a plain leather back. Florence-flex covers the screen and carries cards. Ravenna does both jobs by letting the wallet detach.

Google supports these phones with updates for years, so a case that ages well rather than wearing out is a reasonable bet on this model.

Florence-flex and Ravenna take four or five cards inside the cover with an RFID blocking layer behind them. Lucca carries none, which is the point of it.

Wireless charging works through the leather on all of them.

Full-grain cowhide outside, suede inside, stitched along the full edge. The leather darkens where you hold it and keeps its shape rather than stretching.

Initials can be engraved for 18.90 dollars on the product page.

Leather does not stay the way it looked in the photograph, and that is the reason to buy it.

• First month: colour deepens where your fingers rest, usually the lower corners and the edge beside the camera bar.
• Months two to six: the surface picks up a soft shine from skin contact, and light scratches stop showing as clearly.
• After a year: the shell has taken the shape of your hand and the corners have softened.

Nothing needs to be done to make this happen. If the leather ever feels dry, a small amount of colourless cream worked in with a cloth is enough. Skip the oils sold for boots, because they darken phone leather far more than you expect.

The Pixel 8 also came with a much longer software support window from Google, so these phones are staying in use well past the point where their owners expected to replace them. That is the whole argument for spending something on the outside of one. A case bought for a Pixel 8 today has several years of work ahead of it, and leather is one of the few materials that looks better at the end of that stretch than it did at the start.