Google Pixel 7 review: Amazing camera with delightful Android experience
Last week, Google after a long gap of three years launched the company's premium Pixel phones in India. It comes in two variants-- Pixel 7, and 7 Pro--with prices starting at Rs 59,999.
They are available exclusively on Flipkart and go on sale on Wednesday (October 13) in India.
There is a lot of anticipation among Pixel fans on how the camera hardware fares against the competition and how well the phone performs with the new Tensor G2 silicon.
Last weekend, I started using the regular Pixel 7, and here's what I think of Google's latest phone.
Design, build quality and display
The new Pixel 7, and 7 Pro series retain the design language of the Pixel 6 series, but they are still unique and easily stand out among their peers in the industry.
The only difference between the two --Pixel 7 and 7 Pro-- is that the former comes with a 6.3-inch screen and two cameras on the back, and the latter features a bigger 6.7-inch screen along with a triple camera on the rear side.
They feature a massive metallic visor camera hump on the back. The regular Pixel 7 has a matte finish and the rest of the body has a smooth glass cover. Also, it does a good job of resisting fingerprint smudges to an extent.
Also, the metal on the top and the rails around the edge are made of 100 per cent recycled aluminium. It offers a premium sturdy hand feel. The phone feels light and easy for the fingers to find a grip around it.
Pixel 7 has Corning's Gorilla Glass Victus shield, one of the sturdiest glass covers for phones in the industry. And, it is incorporated on both the front and the back. It has managed to keep my phone scratch-free so far. Also, the device comes with an IP68 rating, meaning it can survive water up to 1.5 metres (approx. five feet) depth for close to 30 minutes.
But, I still insist prospective buyers get the screen guard and cover case for insurance against accidental drops.
Google's new phone features a 6.3-inch full HD+ (1080 x 2400) OLED display with 90Hz refresh rate and a pixel density of 416 ppi (pixels per inch). It is really good for reading, browsing and watching videos indoors. And, even outdoors, the phone can reach a peak brightness of 1400 nits and is easily manageable to read messages without any issues. It also supports the Always-on-Display feature and works fine. Users can just take a glance at the screen to view time or any notification without unlocking the screen.
For security, Google has incorporated an in-display fingerprint sensor, and have to say, it is much better than the Pixel 6a launched earlier this year.
There is hardly any false rejection and most importantly, it doesn't unlock with unregistered fingers, which was the case with some Pixel 6a units around the world.
The face-unlock feature that uses just the 10.8 MP front camera too works great in the natural light and takes a bit of time in the dark but is manageable.
Performance
Google Pixel 7 is powered by Google's new generation Tensor G2 silicon and is paired with Titan M2 security chipset.
Having used it for several days, there is definitely noticeable swiftness in terms of launching apps, photo processing and much better thermal performance. Also, with a 90Hz refresh rate, there is a discernible smoother browsing and reading experience compared to the Pixel 6a (with 1st Gen Tensor).
I loved the live translation and transcription features on Pixel 6a. Here too, the Pixel 7 works as smoothly as it can get. As said before, I am more impressed with heat dissipation when doing heavy-duty tasks such as photo processing and gaming. It gets slightly warmed up during the 4K video recording but never overheated.
Pixel 7 runs pure Android 13 with 8GB LPDDR5 RAM and 128GB storage. It is very smooth to operate with no bloatware. And, if you are a rookie, you can turn on the Pixel Tips while setting up the phone. The phone offers valuable tips to make the best use of the device.
If you get fully accustomed to the Pixel phone, you can disable tips' prompts on the screen. Just scroll the finger upwards on the home screen, and there you will find Pixel Tips in the app drawer. Then, just deep press the app, and there will get the option to pause it. You can always go back to the app drawer and unpause the Pixel Tips.
I'm in love with Google's in-house built transcribe feature. For a journalist, this is a boon. In the audio recording app, the transcribed text come with a time stamp. This helps in narrowing down to any particular point of the interview with ease. And, the most important thing is, it is free of cost and never have to subscribe to some expensive premium app to get audio notes transcribed.
I have to note that sometimes, transcribing feature falters at times. But, the sentences give away the context and also, it is easy to rewind to a particular spot in the audio recording.
This makes a huge difference in terms of improving productivity.
Also, the translation feature has improved a lot. It supports several Indian languages-- Bangla (Bengali), Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.
And the refined material feature of the Android 13 offers some excellent customisation options to match the app's icon, fonts and the colour of the wallpapers, to ensure uniformity in the user interface.
Google has confirmed to offer three Android OS updates (Android 14, 15 and 16) along with five years of security software support.
One of the underrated features of the Pixel series is security. The Pixel 7 comes with Google's proprietary Titan M2 chipset, which has multiple layers of hardware security to help keep personal information safe.
It is tested under Common Criteria PP0084, an industry security gold standard that is used to test identity, SIM cards, bankcard security chips and other applications.
Additionally, Google has to get third-party certification from SGS Brightsight, a leading international security lab. It has received certification against CC PP0084 with AVA_VAN.5 for the Titan M2 hardware and cryptography library from the Netherlands scheme for Certification in the Area of IT Security (NSCIB), the highest level of security vulnerability evaluation system.
Add to that the data from features like Now Playing, Live Caption and Smart Reply in Messages are said to be all processed on the device and are never sent to Google's server to maintain the owner's privacy.
As far as the battery life is concerned, it is subjective to how people consume data on the phone.
If people spend most of their time outdoors and depend on cellular networks, there will be faster draining of the battery. But, with a Wi-Fi connection at home and the office, the Pixel 7 can easily sail through the day. Even if you connect to the cellular internet during your commute or spend some time outside for a few hours, the new Pixel can still manage to last a whole day.
With the Extreme Power Saver feature, the Pixel 7 can go into a strict power diet restricting almost all functions of the apps installed on the device and ensure, it can last for 75 hours.
And, it is advisable to keep the Adaptive Battery feature on. It will ensure most used apps get power while others unused for a long time don't work in the background. It is activated by default.
Even the Adaptive Charing is on by default too. The latter will charge the phone slowly overnight and reach 100 per cent just before you get up. It observes your sleep pattern and alarm over time and accordingly adjusts speed.
One qualm with the Pixel 7 is that it supports just 21W charging speed, very low compared to most of devices. Even those with Rs 30,000 price tag with with faster 33W or even 65W chargers.
And, the Pixel 7 customer has to buy a separate charging adaptor, as the retail box comes with just the Type-C-to-Type-C charger. I used the iPhone's 20W adaptor and with Pixel 7's charging chord, it was able to hit the 100 per cent mark, in a little over 90 minutes.
It also supports wireless charging, but the speed is low. Add to that, it comes with a Battery Share feature. Once activated, users can place any supported devices such as the Pixel Buds Pro case on the back of the Pixel 7's Google branding to wirelessly charge the earphones.
5G support
Both the Pixel 7, 7 Pro and even the Pixel 6a, which was launched earlier this year, will be getting a feature drop update in December to enable 5G connectivity in India.
Photography
Pixel 7 boasts a feature-rich dual-camera module-- main 50 MP Octa PD Quad Bayer wide camera (F/1.85, 1.2 μm pixel width) sensor with LDAF (Laser Detect Auto Focus), OIS+EIS (Optical and Electronic Image Stabilization), 82-degree FOV (field of view) backed by 12 MP ultrawide camera (ƒ/2.2, 1.25 μm pixel width) with 114-degree FOV, Lens correction and LED flash.
It takes fantastic pictures in all light conditions and most importantly, it processes the photos in a very balanced way to ensure subjects be they are humans, animals or flowers retain near-natural colours. And, you won't see any overly processed with smoothened skin or warmer colours in any of the pictures taken in the Pixel 7.
Even at night, subjects such as the trees retain their colours and also, and the scene remains dark.
However, these photography qualities are closely matched by the rival brands in the premium phone categories.
The new Pixel 7 has something special and unique, and others will take time to reach that mark. Google has incorporated advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered computational photography technology. They deliver the most magical motion pictures.
I have to confess, it took some time to get it right to capture the good motion mode photos and boy, they have come really good.
Be it night or in daylight, the photo quality is remarkably good and no other comes close to this. And, some, which cost double the Pixel 7, don't even have this feature.
Even the Photo Unblur and Face Blur features are really great too. Even some old blurred photos or pictures taken with shaky hands on other phones and stored on Google Photos, can be neatly sharpened too. However, it is exclusive to Pixel 7 and 7 Pro, as the photo processing can only be done by Tensor G2.
I played the Magic Eraser feature for the first time on the Pixel 6a and the new phone too, does an exceptionally good job. It leaves very less traces of the object or person, who photobombs in a picture.
It is nearly impossible to see on a compact phone's screen. But, on the computer screen, if you zoom in, there will be some minute traces. Having said that, there are less than a handful of phones that can come close to this art of erasing photo bombers and that too in the native camera apps.
On the front, it features a fixed focus 10.8 MP (ƒ/2.2, 1.22 μm pixel width) camera with ultrawide 92.8-degree FOV. It takes fantastic selfies.
The Portrait Picture mode of the Pixel 7 is the best I have seen in any phone launched in 2022. It takes perfect photos with clear distinction of hairs on the head and even if you are wearing a pair of spectacles, it manages to neatly capture without any smudging issue with the background. And, the colour tone of the face comes as close to the image we see ourselves in the mirror. Big thumbs up to the photography division of the Google Pixel phone team.
The new Pixel 7 supports full HD 1080p and 4K video recording at 30 frames per second (fps) and 60 fps options. They come off good and stable. Thanks to three microphones, the audio is recorded perfectly and syncs pretty well with the video. There is a speech enhancement feature, wherein the camera captures clear speech in noisy locations and blocks disturbances such as traffic, wind and crowd noise. However, the video should be set to 30 fps.
The only thing that is missing is the macro photo mode. For the obvious reason of product differentiation, Google has kept it for the Pixel 7 Pro model. And, the latter also features longer Super Resolution Zoom up to 30X.
The regular Pixel 7 supports up to 8X zoom and have to tell, the camera does a decent job in reducing the noise in the background of the scene, compared to the rival brands in its class.
Though there is no macro mode, the Pixel 7 takes pretty decent photos in close proximity and captures a good amount of details. You can notice when you zoom in on photos like the one below.
Final thoughts
Having seen the Tensor Gen 1 capability on the Pixel 6a, there is a significantly noticeable performance improvement in the Pixel 7 series. The phone is very quick and responsive in terms of loading apps, operating the camera and the value-added features such as translations and live transcribing work smoothly. Also, I am very impressed with thermal dissipation while playing games.
And, the AI-powered native camera app is just soo good. The Magic Eraser, Face Unblur and Motion Mode pictures are class-leading. Wish, Google continued to offer free cloud storage space for photos, so users could let the creative self run wild with the Pixel 7 camera. Well, there is no chance of Google reversing that decision, at least they should think of bringing 256GB storage to India.
For now, Google Pixel 7 comes in just one 128GB option for Rs 59,999 on Flipkart. For more storage, they have to buy a premium Google One cloud storage subscription.
As part of the launch programme, there are several lucrative offers including Rs 6,000 cash back and also additional discounts through phone trade-in deals.
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