10 million Pixels. That’s the shipment target reports say Google is eyeing for next year—ambitious for a lineup that’s still niche and sold in painfully few markets.
The Pixel 7 is the phone that’s supposed to help get it there. It’s smaller, smarter, and cleaner than most Android flagships, but also clearly constrained by Google’s priorities and cost decisions.
This isn’t a excellent flagship. It’s a very Google flagship.
Design: The Visor Grows Up (Mostly)
The Pixel 7 doesn’t try to reinvent the Pixel 6 look, and that’s a good thing. You still get the full-width camera bar, but it’s now metal instead of glass, and the module sits slightly lower on the back, which subtly shifts the phone’s visual balance.
The strip still eliminates table wobble, but it also still collects dust in those deep ridges around the cameras. On the Snow (white) model with a silver frame, smudges and dust are harder to see, but they’re definitely there. For a premium device, the dust channels and a noticeable ridge where the back meets the frame feel sloppy.
Both front and back are Gorilla Glass Victus with IP68 water and dust resistance. The phone is slightly smaller than the Pixel 6 thanks to a 6.3-inch display (down from 6.4 inches) and lands just under 200g. That’s heavy for this footprint and a bit top-heavy thanks to the camera bar, but the rounded frame makes it easier to handle than a lot of 6.5-inch slabs.
Button layout is… still weird. Power above volume on the right side means you’ll hit volume up when you want power until muscle memory kicks in. Google didn’t bother giving the power key a different texture or size either, which would have been an easy quality-of-life fix.
On the plus side, the in-display fingerprint sensor sits higher than many rivals, closer to where your thumb naturally lands. Accuracy and speed are better than the Pixel 6, but still behind the faster optical readers and well behind ultrasonic solutions.
Display: Bright, Accurate… and Still Stuck at 90Hz
The 6.3-inch OLED runs at 1080 x 2400 with HDR10+ support and up to 90Hz. It’s not LTPO like the Pro, and it absolutely isn’t competing on refresh rate anymore when most rivals in this price band are on 120Hz.
Brightness is where Google did the real work. In testing, the panel hit about 460 nits manually and around 974 nits in auto mode, a jump of more than 100 nits over the Pixel 6 and close to the advertised 1,000-nit level. Google also claims up to 1,400 nits in HDR10+ highlights on small portions of the screen.
Color accuracy is excellent. In the default mode the average dE2000 lands around 2.8, with neutral whites and grays. Switch to Adaptive mode and that drops to around 1.3, which is firmly in “calibrated monitor” territory.
Refresh rate handling is basic. Touch the screen and it jumps to 90Hz; leave it idle for a couple seconds and it drops to 60Hz. Video playback runs at 60Hz regardless. You can force 60Hz in settings, but the real-world battery difference between 60 and 90Hz is minimal, and the phone is smooth enough at 90 that there’s no good reason to nerf it.
If you’re coming from a 120Hz flagship, you’ll feel the downgrade in heavy scrolling apps and games. It’s not unusable, but it’s also clearly behind what Samsung, Xiaomi, and others are doing at similar prices.
Performance, Battery, and Charging: Efficient, Not Fast
Under the hood is Google’s Tensor G2, a second-gen custom chip co-developed with Samsung on a 5nm 5LPE process. CPU layout is still an unusual 2+2+4:
- 2x Cortex-X1 at 2.85GHz (slightly up from 2.80GHz)
- 2x Cortex-A78 at 2.35GHz (upgraded from A76)
- 4x Cortex-A55 at 1.8GHz
GPU gets an upgrade to Mali-G710 MP7. It’s not a benchmark monster compared to the latest Qualcomm and MediaTek flagships, and synthetic scores lag behind them, but day-to-day performance is smooth. No major stutters, no freezes, and the UI stays responsive.
Thermals are significantly better than the Pixel 6 series, which struggled with sustained load. In a 30–60 minute CPU throttling test, performance drops to around 70% of peak and stays there, with some spikes but no meltdown, and the chassis gets warm rather than scorching. GPU stability sits around 68% over a 20-loop 3DMark Wild Life Stress Test—again, not chart-topping but acceptable.
The battery story is more interesting. Google shrunk the cell from 4,614 mAh on the Pixel 6 to 4,355 mAh on the Pixel 7, yet overall endurance went up. The phone scored an endurance rating of 96 hours versus the Pixel 6’s 86, with especially strong video playback and web browsing runtimes. Standby is weaker than some rivals, which pulls the score down a bit, but screen-on performance is competitive.
Where the Pixel 7 faceplants is charging. It supports up to 20W USB Power Delivery, ships without a charger, and takes about 1 hour 40 minutes to go from 0 to 100%. A 30-minute top-up gets you to 48%. That half-hour number is tolerable, but after that the speed drops and the phone cools down as the charging curve flattens.
In 2022 (and still now), 20W on a flagship-class device is slow. Even Samsung’s conservative Galaxy S line beats it, and Chinese OEMs are in an entirely different league.
Stereo speakers are carried over from the Pixel 6 era: bottom-firing plus earpiece. Loudness tests score them in the “Good” range at about -26.2 LUFS, with clear vocals, some bass presence, and minimal distortion. They’re not iPhone-level, but arguably a bit better than Samsung’s Galaxy S22 series in this size class.
Software and AI: Where Tensor Actually Matters
This is the part where the Pixel 7 earns its fans.
You get Android 13 with Google’s flavor of “stock,” clean but full of Pixel-only extras. Google guarantees at least three years of major Android updates and five years of security patches, still the fastest and cleanest update story in Android land.
Material You theming extends to icons, and media players pull colors from album art. Android 13 adds native Spatial Audio support (with compatible headphones) and Bluetooth LE Audio for lower latency and multi-device audio.
The real sauce is on-device AI. Tensor G2’s upgraded TPU is claimed to run camera and ML workloads about 60% faster than the first-gen Tensor, and a lot of Pixel-exclusive tricks lean heavily on that.
Call features are stacked:
- Call Screening lets the Assistant answer and summarize calls.
- When you call businesses with IVR menus, the phone transcribes the options on-screen so you can tap instead of listening and remembering.
- The dialer can even suggest better times to call if lines are busy.
Call captions flip voice calls into a pseudo chat: the other person speaks, your phone transcribes their words, and you type replies that the Assistant reads out. Most of these calling features work fully offline, staying on-device.
Noise suppression on calls works in both directions—cleaner outgoing voice for the person on the other end, and Tensor-powered filtering of their background noise for you.
The Recorder app can transcribe entire conversations with speaker labels, even if the phone is in your pocket, and you can search across transcripts later. For journalists, students, or anyone living in meeting hell, this is legitimately useful.
“Now Playing” is still here: the phone passively listens for music around you and shows track info on the lock screen/Always-on display. If it can’t ID a song locally, it can fall back to Google’s online audio search.
Text and image extraction is baked into the Recents screen via a “Select” button or tap-and-hold—copy text even from images, or pull out individual images from app previews.
Face unlock is handled entirely by the selfie camera, so low light and partial face coverage break it easily. When it works, it’s very fast, but security-wise it’s not in the same league as 3D systems. The fingerprint sensor is better than last year but still slower than rivals, and the OS asks for a PIN after just two failed attempts, which gets annoying fast.
The catch: many of the smarter call features are region- and language-limited. If you’re outside supported markets, the Pixel 7’s most unique tricks may not fully be available.
Camera: Same Hardware, Sharper Brain
The Pixel 7 sticks with the Pixel 6’s rear camera hardware and upgrades the processing.
Rear setup:
- Main: 50MP sensor (likely Samsung GN1, 1/1.31″), binning to 12.5MP, OIS, around 24–25mm equivalent, 82° FoV
- Ultrawide: 12MP, 1.25µm pixels, ~114° FoV, no autofocus, no macro
Front:
- Selfie: 10.8MP, 92.8° FoV, f/2.2, fixed focus
Daylight from the main camera is classic Pixel: highly detailed, very consistent, with a processing style that pushes clarity and texture while keeping shadows a bit darker than Samsung or Xiaomi would. Colors are punchy but not insane, HDR is wide, and photos are basically socials-ready out of the box.
There’s no telephoto lens, but 2x digital zoom using Super Res on the main sensor is surprisingly solid in daylight. Detail holds up well, with little obvious upscaling nastiness. It’s not beating a real 2x or 3x lens like you’ll find on a Galaxy S22 or Oppo Find X5, but it’s usable and better than a lot of dumb crops.
The ultrawide is good, not spectacular. Detail is fine across the frame without harsh edge softness or obvious color fringing. Processing matches the main camera closely for color, exposure, and white balance, which is more important than pixel-level sharpness for most people. The lack of autofocus means no true macro and some close-ups will be softer than you’d like.
Low light is where the Pixel reputation still holds. Auto Night Sight kicks in frequently, and dedicated Night Sight mode isn’t dramatically different, except in extremely dark scenes where it can lift shadows and sharpen a bit more.
Night images lean more natural than some rivals. Shadows stay dark, highlights are controlled reasonably well, noise is well handled, and colors stay lively without the neon look you get from some aggressive night modes. If you prefer ultra-bright, almost HDR-night shots, other brands may appeal more.
2x zoom at night remains surprisingly usable, though noise can creep in on some frames. Again, it’s limited by physics but backed by solid processing. Ultrawide at night is ‘fine but forgettable’: okay detail, wider noise, and you really want Night Sight on to keep things under control.
Portrait mode is a mixed bag. At the default 1x (really about 1.6x field of view), portraits look great—sharp with natural skin tones, convincing background blur, and strong subject separation. The 2x option (closer to 3x equivalent) looks frankly bad for this price class: oversharpened to compensate for low detail, and with weaker blur.
Selfies are good in ideal conditions, less so indoors or with strong backlight. You get two FoVs (0.7x and 1.0x), with the tighter one clearly using some crop/upscale magic. HDR does well to protect both face and background, and colors are solid, but raw detail falls short of the best flagship selfie shooters. Portrait selfies are softer still, with edge detection that can struggle on complex backgrounds.
Video tops out at 4K60 on all cameras; there’s no 8K, which is honestly fine. 4K30 from the main camera is excellent: sharp, detailed, wide dynamic range, accurate colors, and clean of noise. 2x zoom video is softer but visually consistent. The ultrawide in daylight records decent 4K, just a step behind the main in sharpness.
At night, main-camera video is standout: low noise, sharp, colorful, and with very good dynamic range. Ultrawide night video falls off a cliff by comparison—noisy, washed-out, and with crushed shadows and blown highlights.
Competition and Verdict: Smartest in Class, Not the Strongest
In Europe around €650, the Pixel 7 sits in an ugly knife-fight of compact-ish flagships.
Direct rivals include:
- Samsung Galaxy S22: similar price, 120Hz display, 3x telephoto, strong cameras, and heavier software skin.
- Oppo Find X5: around the same range, great camera system with 2x zoom, premium display, again more customized software.
- Xiaomi 12: cheaper in many markets (mid-€500s), 6.28-inch 120Hz screen, fast charging, similar camera versatility, but weaker battery life and MIUI instead of Pixel’s clean Android.
- Asus Zenfone 9: more expensive (~€780), smaller 5.9-inch display, no telephoto, but better endurance, faster charging, and a near-stock Android approach with geeky extras.
- Realme GT2 Pro: slightly above €600, massive 6.7-inch display, no telephoto, but otherwise stacked specs and strong value—just not remotely compact.
Against that field, the Pixel 7’s pitch is simple: compact-ish form factor, arguably best-in-class stills camera overall (even without a telephoto), genuinely useful AI features, bright and color-accurate display, good speakers, and strong battery efficiency.
The trade-offs are just as clear:
- No dedicated telephoto lens
- Only 90Hz in a 120Hz world
- Slow 20W charging with no charger in the box
- Some headline AI features locked to specific regions/languages
- Biometrics that are fine, but not flagship-level polished
If you live in a supported market and care more about camera consistency and smart software than charging speed and maxed-out specs, the Pixel 7 is absolutely easy to recommend in the €600–700 bracket. It’s also one of the few phones that actually feels “smart” rather than just “fast.”
If you want 120Hz, real telephoto, and modern charging speeds, there are better-balanced options.
Check back soon as this story develops.