Rather than a great leap forward, the Google Pixel 7 continues to refine the slick Pixel experience.
Considering Google’s relatively short attention span when it comes to developing and then abandoning many of its products and services, the longevity of the Pixel smartphone range speaks to how central it is to Google’s grand plan. It’s a chance to showcase the strengths of both the Android mobile operating system and Google’s own Tensor chips. The result has been some very slick smartphones.
With the Pixel 7, Google continues to iterate on a form factor which has remained constant since the introduction of the rear camera bar with last year’s Pixel 6 and 6 Pro. Under the bonnet is the new Tensor G2 chip, helping the smartphone stand out from the Android crowd.
Review: Google Pixel 7
Australian website here
Price from $999 RRP
Warranty 2 years
You can read other GadgetGuy Google news and reviews here
First impressions
The Google Pixel 7’s premium build and gloss finish make for a great first impression. While that rear camera bar is an acquired taste, the switch to aluminium means it looks less out of place. The design still certainly helps you stand out from the crowd, although the polished glass body makes for a slightly slippery sucker.
The 6.3-inch 2400×1080 screen is actually a tiny bit smaller than the 6.4-inch on last year’s Pixel 6, but not enough to complain about. In return, the handset is a fraction smaller and lighter.
The 20:9 aspect ratio means the handset looks a little tall, although that’s becoming more common these days. Combined with the camera bar it makes the phone a little top-heavy, but not so much as to be of a concern and it soon grows on you.
The display retains the 90 Hz refresh rate, which helps onscreen action remain silky smooth but falls short of the best-in-class 120 Hz found on some rival Android handsets including the Google Pixel 7 Pro, which starts at $1299. For the extra money, the 7 Pro gives you a 3120×1440 pOLED display which is slightly brighter.
Fire up the Pixel 7 and the OLED display ensures a vivid image, which is 25 per cent brighter than its predecessor. While this makes the screen easier to read in direct sunlight, it also helps it make the most of HDR support – which extends to your own photos and videos as well as streaming services like Netflix.
The screen’s white balance is quite cool and the colours a tad saturated, because the Colours are set to “Adaptive” by default, but you can easily change this to “Natural” if you wish.
Turn the phone over in your hands and you’ll find power and volume buttons on the right on the display, easily accessed by your thumb. At the bottom is a USB-C port, accompanied by a speaker and mic. The handset uses that top earpiece speaker to produce stereo sound when you’re viewing in landscape mode.
You won’t see a fingerprint reader, as it’s built into the screen, plus Google has reintroduced support for Face Unlock.
Around the back you’ll find a rear dual camera array in the camera bar, consisting of a 50 MP primary lens and 12 MP ultrawide, along with a flash. You miss out on the Pixel 7 Pro’s third lens, a 48 MP telephoto with 5x optical zoom.
On the front, there’s a 10.8 MP selfie camera – featuring a wider field of view and larger sensor for better nighttime photos.
Google Pixel 7 specs
Screen size 6.3-inch, 2400 x 1080
Screen technology OLED, 90Hz fresh rate
Operating system Android 13
CPU Google Tensor G2
GPU ARM Mali G710 MP07
RAM 8 GB
Battery 4355mAh
Storage 128 GB or 256 GB
Rear cameras 50MP (f/1.85) main; 12MP (f/2.2) ultrawide
Front camera 10.8MP (f/2.2)
Connectivity USB-C 3.2 Gen 2
Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) with 2.4 GHz + 5 GHz + 6 GHz, HE160, MIMO
Bluetooth v5.2
NFC
5G Sub-6
SIM Dual SIM (single nano-SIM and eSIM)
Ruggedness IP68 (dust and water resistant)
Dimensions 155.6 height x 73.2 width x 8.7 depth (mm)
Weight 197 gm
Colours Obsidian, Snow, Lemongrass
Features – hardware
The Google Pixel 7 still runs an uncluttered flavour of Android 13, like its predecessor, with Android 14 not set to be unleashed until 2023. That’s okay when Google promises three years of OS upgrades and five years of security upgrades for the Pixel 7.
While the Pixel 7 build is sleek with slight screen improvements, but that new Tensor G2 chip is the real standout hardware feature. It delivers plenty of grunt, with Geekbench results of 1055 single core and 3276 multicore – a respectable step up from the Pixel 6’s 984 and 2665.
Thankfully it doesn’t take an extra toll on the battery, even though the capacity is only 4355 mAh, down from the Pixel 6’s 4,614 mAh. It should still get you through the longest day, with the Extreme Power Saver mode promising up to 72 hours if you’re running on fumes.
When you are feeling rundown, it supports 30W wired fast charging with USB-PD PPS, along with 15W wireless charging.
Features – software
Most of the phone’s notable new features are software-based, putting that new chip’s smarts and grunt to good use.
For starters, Google Assistant gets an upgrade on the Pixel 7 with faster and more-accurate dictation, transcribing and translating on the fly. You can also feel the fingerprint reader is more snappy when unlocking the handset.
The more striking improvements are focused around the camera, as we’ve come to expect from the Pixel range.
The headline feature is a new Photo Unblur which uses AI to attempt to salvage photos which are out of focus, similar to how the Magic Eraser feature removes distracting people and objects from your photos.
As you’d expect, the phone is taking an educated guess with the benefit of machine learnging, so the results can vary. It does its best work on faces which are slightly out-of-focus, helping perhaps save a family action snapshot. But don’t expect miracles. The phone sometimes focuses its unblurring efforts in the wrong areas, to produce unnatural looking images, but thankfully you can dial the unblur effect up and down to find the sweet spot.
Google has also improved Super Res Zoom, the handset’s computationally-supported digital zoom which attempts to compensate for the lack of true optical zoom. It certainly puts traditional digital zoom to shame, but once again your mileage may vary and some images end up looking sharp but a little over-processed.
Meanwhile, Night Sight can capture great low-light photos more quickly, with Google has also enhanced its True Tone algorithms which aim to accurately represent every skin tone true to nature. That speed boost is a little hit-and-miss depending on the lighting conditions, but the results offer a noticeable improvement on the Pixel 6.
When it comes to capturing video, Cinematic Blur adds a shallow depth of field to your videos to help them look more polished. Active Stabilisation is an advanced form of video stabilisation to help compensate for unsteady hands.
GadgetGuy’s take
The Google Pixel 7 is a worthy addition to the lineup, especially considering it’s kept a sub-$1000 price tag despite everything that’s going on in the world. It’s a compelling offering for the Android faithful, offering a range of improvements on the Pixel 6, although probably not enough to convince you to ditch last year’s model. Especially when you consider that most of the improvements are software based, meaning they may well eventually come to earlier Pixel handsets.
If you are in the market for a new Pixel, also keep in mind that the Pixel 7 Pro isn’t actually that much more expensive. If you care about things like the Pixel 7 Pro’s improved screen, extra RAM, telephone lens or 5G mmWave, then you might consider it extra money well spent.
Would I buy it?
Yes, if I was sure I didn’t need the Pixel 7 Pro.
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