People who switched from Pixels, how has your camera experience been?

[ernen]

I'm currently a pixel 4a user, but am looking for a replacement as it is getting to the end of its life. I am torn between getting the ZF10 and a pixel 8.

I absolutely love the ZF10 as a phone (good size, battery performance, UI, headphones jack etc.), but I'm put off by the camera reviews. I do take a lot of photos, and big part of what I've enjoyed about the pixel 4a has been the quality of pictures I've been able to take (I generally shoot outside, and of stationary objects - buildings/people posing for pics).

For people who have made the leap from pixel to ZenFone, how has your experience of the camera been? Is there a notable drop-off in quality, or am I overthinking?

[MeatPopsicle]

I just replaced my ZF10 with a Pixel 8 Pro after one year. ( ZF10 died and I needed to buy a new phone.) I opted for the Pixel because it fixes my biggest complaints about the ZF10 and the things I thought were dealbreakers actually don't matter that much.  Though I will miss the performance and the form factor.  I did love the ZF10's tiny size.

Bootloader: Asus never delivered the bootloader unlock tool they promised for the ZF10.  The Pixel lineup has a simple bootloader unlock (and relock.) 

OS: I mostly don't mind the Asus flavor of android, but it has some fairly big privacy issues that made me want to install another OS (like lineage, calyx, graphene, etc.)  Since GrapheneOS supports Pixel lineup very easily and seemlessly, that is a major point in favor of the Pixel line.

Headphones: I finally decided I didn't actually use the headphone jack much. My ZF10 came with "free" bluetooth headphones. Now that I use them regularly for a year, I realized I don't need to go back to wired anyway.

Photos: I haven't done side-by-side comparisons of photos, but my spouse has a Pixel 6a and the pictures are (subjectively) better than the ZF10.  My P8Pro is also better than either the ZF10 or P6a. P8Pro really shines on autofocus, which is important for my needs.  If photos are high priority, I wouldn't recommend the ZF10, even though it looks so good on paper.  I'm a semi-pro photographer, so I definitely over-value camera performance, but IMO it's not really a huge difference. 5-10% better results, maybe.