It’s been three years since I last upgraded my phone, which in this day and age is almost a crime against technology, but my Huawei P30 served me well and up until recently I never felt the need to upgrade. The biggest question I had is what phone would I get next. With Huawei phones no longer having access to Android, I had to look for an alternative, and having used a Google Pixel 2 in the past (which I quite liked), the Google Pixel 7 made sense. Thanks to Google, I’ve been using the Pixel 7 for the past couple of weeks, and while I’ve largely enjoyed my time with the Pixel 7, there are a few issues that stop the phone short of being a must-buy product.
The Pixel 7 is the latest generation in Google’s Pixel smartphone series, with the standard 7 model ($999) a step down from the company’s 7 Pro model ($1299). Coming in Obsidian (black), Snow (white) and Lemongrass (pale yellowish-green), the Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch OLED screen and is powered by Google’s second-generation Tensor chip.
The screen, which supports a FHD resolution of 1080×2400 and a 90Hz refresh rate, looks gorgeous, with colours popping with vibrance making watching videos or looking at photos easy viewing. Google states that the screen has a brightness of 1,400 nits, and while I don’t have the tools to test such claims, the screen performed admirably outdoors in bright environments when the brightness was cranked right up.
The Pixel 7 colours
A key selling point of any phone is its look, and the Pixel 7’s design is something I am still trying to figure out if I like it or not. I mean, I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. On the front, the bottom bezel is oddly slightly bigger than the top. It’s only a minor thing but one that you can’t unsee once you notice it, at least for me anyway. While on the back, the protruding camera panel and gloss finish doesn’t overly appeal to my sense of design, however over time and after whacking a case on it, I found myself caring less about what it looks like. What I do like about is that it has good weight behind it, making it feel like a solid unit.
The Tensor chip is where Google claims a lot of the magic comes from, and it’s certainly an upgrade on my previous phone, with the phone’s performance quick and snappy. But the Tensor provides a lot more to the experience than a speed boost, with the chip’s sorcery doing its thing under the hood across the board. Things like the improved transcription of audio recordings or Google Lens abilities are welcomed, but the major boons are with the camera and the tools you are given to enhance your photos, which I’ll discuss shortly.
On the software side of things, the Pixel 7 ships with Android 13, and after my Huawei P30 maxed out at Android 10, I was glad to have the current operating system to see what I’d been missing. The Pixel 7 (and 7 Pro) will have three years of Android OS updates (ending 2025) and five years of security updates (ending 2027), and while the latter is common, only three years of Android updates does feel a little stingy when Samsung offers four.
One appeal of the Google phones is the reasonably lean version of Android, although Google does have a few compulsory features that limit the customisation aspect. On the home screen, users are forced to have both the Google search bar (which I can live with) and the At a Glance feature in the top left, with the latter something I wish I could remove to utilise the area with whatever I desired. While on the lock screen users can only access the Google Home app and the Wallet app, the latter you can disable but there’s no option to replace it with something of your choosing (personally I’d go with the torch).
Users have access the Home or Wallet apps on the lock screen
So much wasted space in the top row of the home screen
Now this may surprise some people, but before owning the Huawei P30 I didn’t use any form of phone lock security – no passcode or fingerprint ID. Just open it up and in you go. The P30 introduced me to the magic of face unlock, and after using it for several years I can’t imagine not having it and I much prefer it to the fingerprint sensor. The lack of face unlock on the Pixel 6 put me off moving back to the Pixel family a year early, but now the Pixel 7 Google has come to the party and I’m all about it.
One of the drawcards of the Pixel series has always been the cameras, with critics and consumers often waxing lyrical about how detailed images taken on the phone are. The Pixel 7 comes with a 50MP wide and a 12MP camera on the back, as well as a 10.8MP front-facing camera. The camera also comes with an 8x super zoom (which is digital, not optical) and supports recording video in 4K. But for all of the plaudits, my experience yielded mixed results, with some photos capturing incredible detail, while others looked blurry or were overwhelmed by the Tensor’s AI processing.
Images where I was able to focus on something nice and close, such as the magpie picture below (what a handsome lad), are genuinely excellent. Pictures of food (if you haven’t tried lime topping and choc mint ice magic with ice cream go treat yourself) and flowers have good colouration and detail. Sadly, images where I used the camera’s zoom didn’t fare as well, with pictures often looking blurry and muddy and as if someone had applied an oil painting filer. I don’t know if the Tensor chip is going too hard to town on the images post-capture or if my expectations were too high coming from the Huawei P30. Perhaps given the Pixel 7’s lack of optical zoom I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s hard not to feel somewhat disappointed given how revered the Pixel’s cameras seem to be.
Regardless of camera quality, the Pixel 7’s camera features thanks to the Tensor chip are sublime. Features like Magic Eraser and Unblur are truly game-changers and can help users fix photos that have been spoiled for a variety of reasons, and there’s a solid suite of tools that users can utilise to spruce up their images.
Have you seen a more handsome bird?
I promise it tastes as good as it looks
This chick is shocked at how good they look
The AI is going to town on this photo
Ranking site Dxomark has the Pixel 7 Pro listed at number two overall (with a score of 147) but has no current ranking for the 7, which is a bummer as I was curious to see how it stacked up against my Huawei P30 (score of 125). But if you’re looking for a smartphone that will really excel in photography, the Pixel 7 Pro is likely to be more up your alley.
Much like taking photos, video recording captures the best results when the camera is closer to the subject. Users can also enable 10-bit HDR, which will improve colours in videos, and a new feature called Cinematic Blur adds an extra dimension to the video.
Where the Pixel 7 lets itself down though is in the battery life, with the phone often failing to make it through a normal day’s usage. I’d wake up at 6am with the phone fully juiced only for it to often be under 10% by 6pm. Now I don’t consider myself a heavy user, maybe a medium user. I barely watch videos, and if I do it’s maybe about 15 minutes a day. I don’t play games, and I have the screen brightness turned halfway down or lower. I do surf the web quite a bit and scroll social media throughout the day, but rarely in large chunks, so I was quite surprised at how quickly the battery was being eaten up, and how hot the device would get at times. There is an extreme battery saver mode for when things do get dire, but I’d hazard a guess and say that anyone who is using their phone enough during the day where it is dying isn’t too far from a charger. Charging isn’t exactly the Pixel 7’s strongest point either, with the phone taking longer than other phones to charge up, even with the company’s 30W charger.
I am one of those people who uses their phone as a phone (you know, to call people), and I was impressed by the level of quality of the speaker, as well as the mic quality. If I had one gripe with the phone calling aspect, it’s that when I would receive a call, the phone would regularly display a black screen and I would have to unlock the screen and answer the call (or see who was calling) via the quick access menu.
Recording Galahad in glorious 4K
Final Thoughts
The battery life is easily the device’s biggest downside, and my experience with the camera didn’t blow me away with every photo, but when did it took some exceptional images. Furthermore, the Gen2 Tensor chip provides a solid user experience and a ton of features that help the Pixel 7 stand out from other smartphones. Is it enough to convince Samsung or Apple users to make the switch? It’s hard to say, but with an asking price of $999, the Google Pixel 7 is a good phone for all that it offers.
Review unit supplied by the manufacturer
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