Google Pixel 7 is official, with wider rollout in 17 countries

Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro have been officially unveiled. While these phones were technically officially announced a long time ago, Google has revealed all the details today. The good news is that prices haven’t changed, at $599 for the Pixel 7 and $899 for the Pixel 7 Pro, which still makes both phones a very good deal. Devices ship on October 13th, and Google is also doing a bit better at distributing devices by country.

But first, phones. The Pixel 7 is an evolution of the Pixel 6 with the same dimensions, price, and basic design. In fact, this is a first for Google. The company’s hardware division changed phone hardware drastically from year to year, often unintentionally as it moved from one manufacturer to another. However, now Google’s hardware has matured to the point where operations are stable enough to make a recurring flagship, and that will likely be Pixel 7 history.

So what are the changes from the Pixel 6? The main feature is a new aluminum camera panel that replaces the old glass and plastic camera panel from the Pixel 6. The Pixel 6’s single large sheet of glass above the camera lenses can lead to light flares in your photos, so these smaller, more isolated lenses seem to be designed to preventing this. Google says the camera panel on the 7 Pro is brushed aluminum, while the base model of the Pixel 7 has a sandblasted matte finish.

Tensor 2nd Generation

The Pixel 6 introduced the Google Tensor SoC and now the Pixel 7 has “Google Tensor G2”. Unlike any other chip manufacturer/developer, Google does not change the number of CPU cores from year to year, so the second generation Tensor still has two “large”X1 cores at 2.85 GHz, two “medium”Cortex A78 cores with 2.35 GHz and four small Cortex A55 cores clocked at 1.8 GHz. There’s a 150MHz difference from last year somewhere, but that’s the same CPU setup as the Pixel 6. The GPU is upgraded from an ARM Mali MP20 Pixel 6 to an ARM Mali G710 MP07. Google is also promising (with little further detail) a new image processing DSP, a new modem, and a “next generation”Google Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) that will make some specific Google AI features faster.

Unofficially, the chip is still manufactured by Samsung’s Exynos division and is now manufactured on Samsung’s 4nm process, upgraded from the Pixel 6 and 6a tensors, which are manufactured at Samsung’s 5nm factory. Google promised lower power consumption, probably in connection with this.

Google hasn’t made any claims that the CPU or GPU is faster (I asked), but ARM promised the G710 would be 20 percent faster and 20 percent more power efficient compared to the G78 when it was announced a year ago, so we I will see. All of Google Tensor’s year-to-year claims of “percent improvement”revolve around hyper-specific AI use cases in a single app, such as Google’s text-to-speech models now “run 70 percent faster and average 50 percent less power”or that video calls Google Meets have “a new machine learning segmentation [that] is 22x larger and [has] up to a 6x improvement in accuracy.”If you’re on Zoom instead of Google Meet, I guess you’re out of luck.

The Pixel 7 Pro has a 6.7-inch 3120×1440 resolution, 120Hz OLED display, 12GB of RAM, 128GB of internal storage, and a 5000mAh battery. The base model of the Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch 90Hz 2400×1080 OLED display, 8GB of RAM, 128GB of storage, and a 4355mAh battery. Those specs for the Pixel 7 Pro are identical to last year’s, although Google promises the display on both phones is 25 percent brighter. The base model gets a slightly smaller screen (was 6.4 inches) and a smaller battery (was 4600 mAh). The base Pixel 7 model this year has thinner bezels and a slightly smaller, thinner body (155.6×73.2×8.7mm vs. 158.6×74.8×8.9mm), hence a smaller battery.

Both phones have 30W wired charging, wireless charging, an in-screen fingerprint reader, IP68 water resistance, Wi-Fi 6e, and optional mmWave. The main camera on both phones hasn’t changed, which should mean the Samsung GN1’s 50MP camera, while the base Pixel 7 model also retains the old 12MP wide-angle lens. The 7 Pro gets a new wide-angle sensor, still 12MP but wider with a 125.8-degree FOV, compared to 114-degrees on the cheaper model. The Pro wide-angle lens now has autofocus, which also supports macro mode. The Pro model also adds a new 48MP telephoto lens with 5x zoom and digital zoom up to 30x.