In early October, Google announced the Pixel 7 series smartphones, which are by all accounts fairly minor upgrades over the Pixel 6 series. For a variety of reasons, I didn’t jump to upgrade immediately, which is rare for me, as I’ve owned at least one handset in every Pixel generation dating back to the original. But as you may know, my relationship with Pixel is complex. I wouldn’t call it love/hate. Maybe just conflicted.

I’ve already written too many words about the growing gap between my hopes and expectations for Pixel and the disappointing reality. But the short version is that I love the idea and promise of Pixel and am too consistently underwhelmed by what Google actually delivers. The Pixel 6 Pro wasn’t by any means a nadir for the Pixel line, but it did have the bad fortune of arriving at the time when I had finally had enough. And so I switched to an iPhone 13 Pro in December 2021.

That said, I’ll always hold out hope that Google will finally get it right and deliver the Pixel I want: something the size of the non-Pro Pixel 7, with a flat display, a killer three-lens camera system, and a fingerprint reader that actually works. Knowing that the Pixel 7 series wouldn’t fulfill this need, I didn’t upgrade immediately, as there’s little sense in spending several hundred dollars on a smartphone that is only a marginal upgrade over its predecessor, especially when I knew I wouldn’t be using it full time.

But I waited and I watched. I saw that some Pixel fans were getting $100 coupons for the Google Store, which, when added to the value of my Pixel 6 Pro trade-in, might have pushed me over the top. I considered just getting the cheaper non-Pro Pixel 7 so I could at least take advantage of some of the new software and AI features, in particular Photo Unblur. The issue is that Pixels don’t exactly hold their value and waiting on next year for an upgrade might ultimately be more expensive than upgrading now with the right conditions.

And then those conditions happened: two weeks ago, Google teased its coming Black Friday sale, with the Pixel 7 Pro costing just $749, a savings of $150. That day, a reader coincidentally shared his $100 Google Store coupon with me, too. And so I figured those two savings combined with the $550 that Google would give me on trade for the Pixel 6 Pro, would make the upgrade make sense. That said, I also knew that Google would likely not let me combine the $100 coupon with the Black Friday sale and that’s still unclear. And so I am paying either $100 or $200 for the Pixel 7 Pro, plus taxes. Either way, that’s a good price. This thing is normally $900.

With those financial shenanigans out of the way, I pulled my Pixel 6 Pro out of the drawer over the weekend, charged it up, updated all the apps, and then installed a system update with the idea of looking at it with fresh eyes. Which is a bit of an exaggeration, since I’ve used it off and on this past year, mostly during some of our trips to Mexico City. But it still felt a little weird, like I was looking up an old girlfriend on Facebook or whatever. This was an alternate present in which I had made very different decisions in the past.

And while I do wish I could use this camera system every day—the iPhone may beat the Pixel for video, but Google’s camera system is decidedly better for still photos—the issues I had with the Pixel 6 Pro were all present and accounted for. It’s too big and bulky. I can’t stand the curved display edges, which are especially problematic when typing near those edges, and are reflective regardless. I had trouble signing in with the in-display fingerprint reader because of course I did.

But OK. I do like the clean Pixelized Android software image. I’d prefer a bigger display than the 6.1-incher on my iPhone 13 Pro, though the 6.7-inch Pixel 6 Pro is likewise too big. (The Pixel 6/7’s 6.3-inches could be the Goldilocks of smartphone display sizes right now, the mythical sweet spot.) And the camera bump is actually functional, too, in that the phone doesn’t wobble when used on a table or another flat surface. It’s not all bad.

Of course, the big concern here is the Pixel 7 Pro and how it differs from its predecessor. There are only a few notable differences, based on Google’s specifications.

The two handsets are about the same size, with the same display sizes, resolutions, aspect ratios, and 120 Hz refresh rates, but the Pixel 7 Pro can get brighter in certain conditions, like HDR. Battery size and life are about the same, it looks like, and both have the same basic fast charging problem, meaning that neither can accurately be called fast charging. (In fact, this is scandalous.)

The basic form factors are the same, too, though the Pixel 7 Pro has an edgeless Corning Gorilla Glass Victus rear now, and the camera bump is polished aluminum instead of plastic. That could be good or bad, as aluminum can scratch and that thing sticks out pretty prominently.

RAM and storage options (12 GB of RAM and 128, 256, or 512 GB of UFS 3.1 storage) are identical. The in-display fingerprint reader is either exactly the same as before or a small upgrade, depending on who you listen to, but the Pixel 7 Pro now offers Face Unlock too, which is insecure but fast. The Google Tensor SoC has been updated to the G2 version in the Pixel 7 Pro, with minor performance improvements.

Of course, the biggest hardware changes are in the camera system: the 50 MP Octa PD Quad Bayer wide camera carries over unchanged, but the ultrawide camera is now actually ultrawide on the Pixel 7 Pro—126 degrees vs. the paltry 114 degrees on its predecessor—and it offers autofocus. Better still, the telephoto lens, while still 48 MP, is now a Quad Bayer PD lens with 5X optical zoom (and 30X Super Res Zoom, probably more effectively 10X for decent photos), up from 4X.

As big, the Pixel 7 Pro enables two new software camera features: Photo Unblur, which I am eager to test against some old photo scans, and Macro Focus, which I’ve had on other smartphone cameras and don’t use very much.

When the Pixel 6 Pro arrived last year, Google offered it in three colors, white, yellow, and black, none of which interested me (I got black, but would have preferred the light green “Sorta Seafoam” offered on the non-Pro Pixel 6). For the Pixel 7 Pro, we finally get a decent color on the Pro line: Hazel, which has a champagne-colored camera bar, which I ordered. (The other two options are black and white, of course.) It’s a stunning combination … that I will immediately hide in a case (that I already purchased) because I’m not an idiot.

My Pixel 7 Pro arrives this week, possibly as soon as today. More soon.

Tagged with Pixel 7, Google Pixel