In their article we will learn all about Google Pixel 7. Google’s Pixel phones had a big year in 2021. The chipsets switched from Qualcomm Snapdragon to Google’s own Tensor chips, and the phones got a whole new look.
So, what will happen in the Pixel world in 2022? Even Google has said that the design will stay pretty much the same, but we’re still hoping for a few key improvements on both phones. And what’s this about a possible third model?
We put together all the news and rumours about the new devices, as well as a few things we’d like to see when the Pixel 7 comes out.
When is the Google Pixel 7 likely to launch?
Google officially announced the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro on May 11, during the opening keynote of its 2022 I/O developer conference. It said that both phones will be released “this fall” and showed a few official photos.
Jon Prosser, a leaker, thinks he knows more. He says that there will be a launch event and pre-orders on October 6, and that the phone will go on sale officially a week later, on October 13. He says it will come out at the same time as the Pixel Watch, and we also expect Android 13 to be released in full.
That makes perfect sense. Over the past few years, Google has released its main Pixel devices in October and its cheaper versions in the summer after that. For example, last year’s Pixel 6 series and this year’s Pixel 6a were both released in the summer.
How much will the Google Pixel 7 cost?
Here are the prices of the last few generations of Google devices so you can get an idea of how much money you’ll need to buy the new ones when they come out.
- Google Pixel 6: £599/$599
- Google Pixel 6 Pro: £849/$899
- Google Pixel 5: £599/$699
- Google Pixel 4: £669/$799
- Google Pixel 4XL: £829/$899
As you can see, the price for the basic Pixel seems to have settled around £599/$599, while the Pro level, which was added in 2021, makes things a bit more expensive. We expect Google to keep these prices, but they could go up when the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro come out because there aren’t enough chips to go around and the cost of making them has gone up because of Covid. We hope not.
What are the Pixel 7 specs and features?
Since the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro just came out, there isn’t much solid information about what you can expect from their successors. However, details are slowly starting to come out, and some of them are coming from Google.
Design
With the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, Google changed the way its phones look completely. The Pixel 5 no longer had a plastic body or a simple design. Instead, it was made of high-quality materials and had a bold look with a raised strip on the back that housed the cameras.
At I/O 2022, the company surprised everyone by releasing a few Pixel 7 images. Based on those images, it looks like the Pixel 7 range isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel. Most companies like to keep their products looking the same from one generation to the next. Apple’s iPhones are the best example of this.
Unsurprisingly, both phones have the same design, but the camera module has been slightly changed so that it now wraps directly around the phone’s frame and makes the sensors stand out more.
A report from CarHP says that the standard Pixel 7 will be 155.6 x 73.1 x 8.7 mm, which is a bit smaller in every direction than the Pixel 6.
With some help from SmartPrix, OnLeaks found that the rough dimensions of the 7 Pro are 163 x 76.6 x 8.7 mm. This makes it about the same size as the 6 Pro, but just a little bit thinner.
Several production prototypes of the two phones have shown up on eBay and Facebook Marketplace, giving us a better look at them.
A few Reddit users have said that they found or even bought the prototype phones. Since then, most of them have stopped working, probably because Google has found them and turned them off remotely.
Even Unbox Therapy, a popular YouTube channel, got a pair of prototypes and showed them off in a video on his channel.
The video doesn’t tell us much about the phones that we didn’t already know, but it does show them from different angles and in a less polished way than the marketing materials do. The YouTube video also shows in great detail how the design of the new models differs from that of the 6 series. However, keep in mind that these are only prototypes, so the finer design details may not be final.
Displays
The displays on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro are 6.4in AMOLED and 6.71in LTPO AMOLED, respectively. Both models support HDR10+, but the Pro model has a 120Hz refresh rate and a higher resolution than the cheaper models.
According to a report from OnLeaks, the 7’s screen size could go as low as 6.2in, while the 7 Pro’s screen size will either stay the same or go up slightly to 6.8in. We don’t think there will be many more changes to the way things look.
Ross Young, an expert in the display business, says that the 7’s screen size will go down to 6.3 inches, while the Pro’s screen size will stay the same at 6.7 inches. He also says that at least the Pro will use 120Hz LTPO AMOLED tech again, but he doesn’t say if the regular 7 will get the same thing.
It doesn’t look like it will, though. 9to5 Google looked at some code from the Android Open Source Project and found display drivers for the new Pixel models.
They say the Pixel 7 will have a display with a resolution of 1080 x 2400 and a refresh rate of up to 90Hz, while the Pixel 7 Pro will have a display with a resolution of 1440 x 3120 and a refresh rate of 120Hz. Those are the same specs as the 6 series models, and the code even suggests that Google will use the same Samsung panels. So don’t expect any changes to the screens from one year to the next, except that the screen on the 7 will get a little smaller.
Leaks since then suggest that the 7 Pro might get a slight upgrade, but not much. A look at the code shows that there is a way to make the maximum brightness a bit higher than the 6 Pro could handle, but only by 200 nits in high brightness mode. It’s not a huge improvement, but it will make a difference when used outside.
Second-generation Google Tensor chips
Google’s use of its own Tensor chips was one of the most talked-about things about the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. Like Apple and Samsung, which use their own A-series and Exynos chips in their best phones (though Samsung still uses Qualcomm Snapdragon chips in some countries), Google has taken the big step of designing and making the processors that go into its devices.
Samsung made the first Tensor, and it is said that they are already ready to make the Tensor 2 in large quantities using a 4nm process.
We might not see a big improvement in performance, at least not from the CPU. From the bootlogs of a Pixel 7 Pro prototype that was broken, the Google News Telegram group was able to figure out that the chip uses Cortex-A55 cores.
This is important in several ways. First of all, those efficiency cores are the same ones that were used in the first Tensor chip, so it looks like they haven’t been updated. More importantly, the A55 is based on Armv8 architecture, not the more recent Armv9, which is used in chips like the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and the MediaTek Dimensity 9000. Both architectures can’t be on the same chip at the same time, so if the A55 cores are being used, the whole CPU can only use the older architecture. And since Google mostly used the last Armv8 cores, it can’t upgrade from the Cortex-X1 prime cores either. Google can only upgrade its CPU by making a small jump from its two Cortex-A76 performance cores to the slightly better Cortex-A78. Changing the clock speed is not an option.
So, the Tensor 2 is likely to have only small CPU improvements over the first generation, if any at all. It still gives Google room to improve GPU performance and machine learning, which was the clear focus of the first Tensor for the company. So, we still expect to see a few changes, but they won’t be in terms of raw computing speed.
9to5
Google has found a link between the codename “Cloudripper” and the model number “GS201,” which could be the new silicon. Since then, the same site has found more information. More codenames, including Cheetah, Panther, and Ravenclaw, have been linked to a Samsung modem, likely the Exynos Modem 5300, which is likely to be used with the new Tensor chip.
9to5
Google says that Cheetah and Panther are codenames for the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro. In the past, birds and fish were used instead of big cats. The third name, “Ravenclaw,” is thought to be more than just a reference to Harry Potter. This could be a mix of the Pixel 6 Pro’s codename, “Raven,” and the theme of “cat claws” in the new hardware. It could be a reference to a testing device that uses the new Tensor 2 chip in Pixel 6 Pro hardware.
On the other hand, the 9to5Google report about display drivers also found a third device. This device, called “G10” in the drivers, is making some people think it may be a third Pixel 7 model, maybe a Pixel 7 Ultra or more likely the Pixel 7a from next year. Few other details about this kind of phone have leaked, and Google didn’t hint at it when it showed off the 7 series.
We haven’t seen any benchmarking for any of these devices yet, so we don’t know how the 2nd gen will compare to the 1st gen. We would expect Google to work on improving both performance and energy efficiency, just like they do with every new processor.
One last thing about connectivity: four Pixel 7 models have been approved by the FCC. Two of them only support sub-6GHz 5G connectivity, while the other two also support mmWave. This almost certainly means that models for the US will only support mmWave, while models for other places will only support sub-6.
One of the sub-6 models and one of the mmWave models also have ultra wideband (UWB). This was only available on the 6 Pro last year, and it looks like it will only be available on the 7 Pro this year as well.
Cameras
Thanks to the official photos, we know that Google is keeping the same camera setup for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. The Pixel 7 has two cameras on the back, while the Pixel 7 Pro has three.
Developer and leaker Kuba Wojciechowski decided to dig a little deeper. He went into Google’s code to match up component sensor IDs and figure out some camera specs.
He found out that the 7 and 7 Pro will both use the same main camera sensor (Samsung GN1) and ultrawide sensor (Sony IMX381) as before, so you shouldn’t expect any major hardware updates there.
The telephoto on the 7 Pro will be changed, though. It will now use Samsung’s GM1 sensor instead of the old IMX586, and both phones will now use the same 11Mp 3J1 sensor for selfies.
This selfie shift backs up other evidence that phones are getting better at taking selfies. 9to5 found the code. Google seems to show that both Pixel 7 phones will be able to take selfie videos at the same 4K resolution as the 3J1. The 6 Pro could already do that, but the 6 couldn’t. This could mean that the 7 will be able to film from the front like its bigger brother.
But with Google, the software and the Tensor chip that runs it are probably more important than the hardware. So don’t think that all this means that the back cameras won’t get better, but it does look like Google will use software tricks to get more out of the same sensors.
Wojciechowski also found specs for a third phone, codenamed Lynx, with specs that are a little bit different. It has the same GN1 main sensor, but it is paired with the IMX787 and has an IMX712 sensor on the front that hasn’t been announced yet. The leaker thinks that this is just an internal device for testing new camera sensors, but it could also be seen as more evidence for a Pixel 7 Ultra.
We also know that Google is making plans for a selfie camera that goes under the screen. At least two patents have been filed by the company so far. The most recent one is shown here. Lets Go Digital found it, and it has a lot of the same camera tech that we’ve seen in phones like the ZTE Axon 30 5G and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3.
We don’t think Google will use this technology in the Pixel 7 series. Instead, it’s more likely to show up in the rumoured Pixel Fold or in Pixel 8 and later phones.
Will there be a Pixel 7 Ultra?
The idea of a third Pixel 7 phone has come up a few times, which is interesting. It’s there in the “G10” code that 9to5Google found, and again as the “Lynx” that Wojciechowski found during his “deep dive” into the camera.
Digital Chat Station, a leaker, has also talked about this phone on Weibo, calling it a “Pixel flagship.” He thinks it will have a 2K screen, the same Tensor 2 chip as the other Pixel 7 phones, and, most interestingly, a ceramic body. This is a high-end material that Google hasn’t used on a Pixel phone before.
He also talks about the cameras, and it’s interesting that his ideas here match up with Wojciechowski’s Lynx device. DCS says there will be a 50Mp main camera and a secondary camera with an IMX787 sensor, which is exactly what the Lynx seems to have.
It’s still not clear, but it seems more and more likely that Google is working on a more powerful Pixel. It’s still unclear if it’s real and if it will come out at the same time as the 7 and 7 Pro or a little later.
The Pixel 6 and 6 Pro were great reimaginings of a pure Google phone, so we can’t wait to see what happens when the new versions come out in 2022. We’ll keep adding new information to this article as it comes out, so be sure to check back often.