Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro: An initial review
Google has finally started to take the Indian smartphone market seriously. After beating around the bush with Pixel 6A, which failed to garner any major hype here in India, Google has finally launched its new flagship devices Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro in India on October 6, 2022.
Overview
Both the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro have taken on the design of their predecessor, yes, we are talking about that Robocop like main camera setup. But Google has managed to refine that look this time.
The OLED displays look very good on both devices, although the one on Pixel 7 is a 6.3inch Full HD display with a refresh rate of 90Hz while the one on the 7 Pro is a 6.7inch Quad HD display with a refresh rate of 120Hz.
Both devices come with aluminum frame and the Corning Gorilla Glass Victus protects both the screen and the back.
Both the devices are IP68 certified i.e. both devices will be dust and water proof to a certain extent.
Unlike their predecessor, the Pixel 6A, the new Pixel devices come with a Tensor G2 chipset which is a part of Google’s own Tensor chipset line.
The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro have a 4355 mAh and 5000 mAh battery respectively and support up to 30W of PD charging.
On the camera front, both the 7 and 7 Pro sport a 10.8 MP selfie shooter. The rear camera setup for Pixel 7 is a 50MP stacked with a 12MP ultrawide whereas the 7 Pro has a triple camera setup with a 50MP main censor, a 12MP ultrawide and a 48MP telephoto camera.
The devices support 2 SIM cards but the SIM tray has only space for one physical SIM. The other one has to be an e-SIM.
The Pixel 7 comes bundled with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM along with UFS 3.1 storage options of 128GB and 256GB whereas the 7 Pro comes with 12GB LPDDR5 RAM with the same UFS 3.1 storage options of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. Unfortunately, for the Indian market only the 128GB of storage has been enlisted on Flipkart.
Both devices have stereo speakers and come with Android 13 out of the box.
Design
The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro both look a lot similar to their predecessor, the Pixel 6A, but Google after a lot of backlash and trolling has refined the design by defining the camera module placement on the back more precisely. The aluminum bar on the back runs from end to end of the frame and thus the phone doesn’t wobble while it lays on your desk. You get the power button and the volume keys on the right and the SIM tray on the left as usual. At the bottom you can find the speaker grills on both sides of the USB-C port. The devices are IP68 certified which means they are protected from dust and water to a certain extent. The body of both devices is protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus.
Display
The display on both devices is bright and crisp and have peak brightness of 1400 and 1500 nits respectively. While watching HDR content, the display is limited to 1000 nits on both the devices.
The Pixel 7 sports a 6.3inch FHD OLED display with aspect ratio of 20:9 supporting a refresh rate of 90Hz. The Pixel 7 Pro on the other hand rocks a 6.7inch QHD LTPO OLED display with aspect ratio of 19.5:9 supporting a refresh rate of 120Hz. The display on Pixel 7 Pro is slightly curved on the edges. The displays on both devices are protected by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and supports Always-On-Display. Both the devices sport an in-display fingerprint sensor and Google have seem to removed the issue that 6A had. The fingerprint scanner is not the fastest out there but it’s not slow by any standards either.
Battery
The Pixel 7 has a 4355 mAh lithium ion battery. It supports 30W charging which is pretty slow by 2022 standards. But while testing, the max charging speed never went beyond 20W. The Pixel 7 also supports 20W fast wireless charging and also has a “Battery Share” feature which is basically Google’s way of saying reverse wireless charging.
With mixed usage, Pixel 7 has a SoT of approximately 5 hours with about 10% battery. Although, this was primarily due to the fact that the device was mostly on mobile data. With Wi-Fi usage the battery stats should improve. The idle drain on Pixel 7 is on the higher side. It drains 10% battery with AoD on and 6% with AoD off sitting overnight.
Pixel 7 Pro comes with a 5000 mAh lithium ion battery and it also supports 30W charging and 20W wireless charging. Again, while testing, the wired charging speed never went over 23W. It also has that “Battery Share” reverse wireless charging feature.
The SoT on the Pro model was not that better than the Pixel 7. It came out a little less than 6 hours with about 15% battery remaining. It’s to be noted that this time the device had a mixed usage of mobile data and Wi-Fi. There is one concern though, the 7 Pro loses the battery incredibly fast when used outdoors. The battery drained anywhere between 10-11% within 15 minutes time. Also, the device heated up a bit.
Both devices take well over one and a half hour to full charge the battery. That said, you’ll have to top up the battery at least once to get through the day.
Google’s adaptive battery feature takes a few days to assess your phone usage but once it takes over, it is supposed to improve the battery life considerably on the devices.
Camera
The Pixel 7 has a dual camera setup. The main camera is 50MP sensor with f/1.85 aperture. It also has Optical Image Stabilization (OIS) and laser autofocus. The second one is a 12MP wide-angle camera with f/2.2 aperture and a field of view of 114 degrees. This one, Google claims, have both OIS as well as EIS. The video capability of the device maxes out at 4K 60 fps on both rear camera sensors and also supports 10-bit HDR. In the video department, cinematic mode is the new video feature that blurs out the background around a subject.
The Pixel 7 lives up to the reputation of pixel devices having a great camera. The photos came out sharp, vibrant and balanced in almost every condition. Often the device takes photos that look even better than real life, thanks to the optimization from Google. The night sight photos came out good too without distorted details or much noise in the background. The software improvement brings manual control over night sight namely “no night mode”, “standard night mode” and “max night mode”. The pictures taken with 2X zoom although lose color and mess the exposure as compared to the main camera. That happens due to the fact that the 2X zoom is actually digital zoom i.e. cropped image from the main sensor. The digital zoom maxes out at 8X and the photos taken via it are easy to differentiate. The portrait mode on the new devices has improved due to the better edge detection which now easily catches the rogue strands of hair here and there. Google has also improved the Real Tone on the new devices and the skin tones are detected well enough. It’s safe to say that the new pixel devices capture the skin tone better than the iPhone 14 series.
The Pixel 7 Pro has a triple camera setup with the same 50MP main camera sensor as the Pixel 7 but it has a 30X zoom capability. It is bundled with a 12MP wide angle sensor same as the Pixel 7 but this one has a larger field of view at 125.8 degrees and doubles up as a macro camera too. The third one is a 48MP telephoto camera which has a 5X optical zoom. Although the Pixel 7 Pro goes all the way up to 30X but the images don’t come out that great if you zoom in. The sweet spot lies near 10X zoom. All three cameras support 4K at 60fps and can switch seamlessly to one another while recording.
The selfie camera on both Pixel 7 and 7 Pro is a 10.8MP shooter with f/2.2 aperture and performs rather well but messes up the skin tone on the Pixel 7 sometimes. Perhaps, the Real Tone isn’t available for the selfie camera. The video from the front camera also supports 4K recording at 60fps. The face unlock is also available on both devices but now is similar to the iPhones as they unlock on the lock screen rather than bringing you to the home screen.
Pixel 7 series have an added feature called “Unblur” which, as the name suggests, unblurs your photos even if they are old and taken from some other device. This is done through AI, of course. Although it doesn’t always work out. It can only unblur and adjust the photos that are blurry to a certain extent. It works surprisingly well on when motion blur is present. The tool isn’t fully magic, though. Images that are exorbitantly grainy or so blurry you can’t make out what you’re looking at with your own eyes, the tool will not work. It’s not as if you take a photograph of ‘The Flash’ running and use the unblur to deduce that his real identity is Barry Allen. Google claims that Unblur is exclusive to Pixel 7 series, but we are pretty sure that this feature will come to other devices as well under Google One membership. The Magic Eraser is again available on the devices as was the case with their predecessor. If you are unaware of it, it’s a feature that lets you remove unwanted objects from your photographs.
Performance
Performance of both the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro should feel nearly identical in day-to-day use. Both phones run on Google’s Tensor G2 chip, providing some modest improvements over their predecessors. For people living under the rock, Tensor chipsets have been developed by Google in collaboration with Samsung, so it’s safe to say that the Tensor chipsets are made on Samsung’s Exynos SoC framework. While these devices can’t quite measure up to, say, the Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 in benchmarks alone, they’re plenty fast for anything you could throw at them. The G2 stands on the same line as the Snapdragon 865 in terms of raw power. The rumors had it that the G2 is based on 4nm technology but Google cleared the air and confirmed that G2 is based on 5nm technology.
Both devices get hot, not just while gaming. Browsing the web or scrolling through Twitter and/or Instagram can also heat up the back of each phone. It’s less noticeable if you’re using a case, but nonetheless, these phones get hot.
Tensor G2 impresses more because it makes all these smart features work a bit faster. Night Sight, for example, is twice as fast as it was on the Pixel 6, and the speed improvement is noticeable when you’re standing still taking a low-light photo.
The Tensor G2 isn’t made for gamers but handled games with heavy graphics pretty well. Genshin Impact played with medium settings while maintaining the frame rate of 60fps.
Both the devices come with Android 13 out of the box but to be honest there isn’t much difference to notice between Android 12 and 13 other than a few tweaks here and there.
Conclusion
The Pixel devices have always been known to bring out the best of Android to the and the Pixel 7 Series is no exception. You can experience the best android software experience and the top class cameras once you dive into the world of Pixel. The thing to be noted is that the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro aren’t made for gamers and in general they don’t tend well to heavy users. So, if your priority is hardcore gaming or heavy usage then these might not be the devices for you. On the other hand, if you are someone who is an Android fanboy/girl then these will be in your sweet spot. These will also satiate the photography enthusiast in you. To top that, Google promises 3 years of software update and 4 years of security updates. You should be aware of the fact that Google has changed its update policy quite a few times. Also, Google isn’t the top brand with long update support now as Samsung promises 4 years of software update and 5 years of security updates for its flagship models. All in all, choosing pixel can never go wrong if you want to be among the first ones to get your hands on the new software updates. The cameras optimization has always been one of the best out there.
The price of Google Pixel 7 in India has been set at ₹59,999 for the sole 8GB RAM with 128GB ROM variant. It is available in Snow, Obsidian and Lemongrass color options. Whereas, the Google Pixel 7 Pro comes at a price of ₹84,999 for the sole 12GB RAM with 128GB ROM variant. It is available in Hazel, Snow and Obsidian color options.
As an introductory offer, Google is offering a cashback of ₹6,000 on the Pixel 7 and ₹8,500 cashback on the Pixel 7 Pro. However, there is no information on how long the introductory offer would last. Flipkart is providing discounts for purchases using select bank cards, No-cost EMI options for the Pixel 7 on the e-commerce website start from ₹10,000 per month, while the no cost-EMI options for the Pro model starts at ₹14,167 per month. Considering your budget, you can choose either of the two devices and they won’t let you down.