Pixel 7 Pro review: Google is refining the best Android phone

The Pixel 7 could be the first sequel to Google’s flagship smartphone.

It may seem strange to talk about the “7th version”of a smartphone, but so far every Pixel flagship has changed manufacturers or used a completely new design year after year. This strategy is completely opposite to that used by larger, more serious hardware manufacturers like Apple or Samsung, from which you can expect stable, iterative smartphone designs with big design changes every few years. When you struggle to build a smartphone from scratch every year, it’s hard to do anything in terms of bug fixes, improvements, or adapting to customer feedback.

The Pixel 6 Pro was already the best Android phone you could buy, so it didn’t take too much for Google to release a good smartphone this year. All the important features of the Pixel 6 are here, such as the best-in-class price tag, great camera, and fast, clean software. But even with such a solid base, Google did a good job of addressing some of our minor complaints about the Pixel 6. There’s no reason to upgrade if you have a Pixel 6, but the actual “version 2″of Google’s flagship smartphone might draw more in. people to try the brand.

Refinement of an already excellent design

The best part of the Pixel 6 design, the camera bezel, is making a comeback in the Pixel 7. The Google camera bezel remains the best rear camera design in the industry as it frees up space for the camera lens and is also functional. The band is a raised horizontal band on the back of the phone that allows the device to stand on a table without rocking back and forth (an unfortunate side effect of being hit by a corner-mounted camera). It’s a big improvement over the average wobbly smartphone. The camera bar also helps with grip if you stick your index finger under the ridge it forms on the back of the phone. It’s hard to support the device by the camera’s angled bump, but the large tactile bump gives you another point of contact.

However, the Pixel 6’s camera panel was a mess of parts. The top and bottom edges were aluminum, and each lens was covered by a single strip of glass. Google couldn’t curve the glass around the left and right sides, so the glass abruptly stopped and switched awkwardly to black plastic. The large glass sheet was also a magnet for glare in some lighting conditions. Light can enter the glass strip from different angles and be reflected, blurring your photos.

The camera panel on the Pixel 7 makes things easy. The body of the phone, the sides, and the outside of the camera bezel are now a single piece of aluminum, and there are only one or two glass cutouts for the camera lenses. Glare problems are reduced. The camera has not changed much, but a 5x telephoto lens (and 30x software zoom) has been added.

Google has made all the wrong choices when it comes to differentiating the design of the Pixel 7 Pro and its smaller brother, the Pixel 7, resulting in a cheaper phone with a better overall design. The Pixel 7 Pro uses a mirror finish on the aluminum sides and camera panels. There are fingerprints and scratches on the finish, and the camera panel on my review unit, which is barely one week old, is already scuffed up. The base model of the Pixel 7 has a polished brushed aluminum finish that hides scratches better. The brushed aluminum looks better as it doesn’t leave fingerprints and is nicer to the touch, while the brushed aluminum sides provide a bit more grip than the Pro’s smooth surface.

The base Pixel 7 also has a completely flat screen, while the Pixel 7 Pro has a curved display. Curved displays distort content around the edges of the display, trap glare and make accidental touches easier. This is a marketing anti-feature that manufacturers should get rid of. The Pixel 7 Pro’s display is noticeably less curved than the Pixel 6 Pro’s, but why not just rid the user of that nasty design entirely?

With a better aluminum finish and a flat screen, the $600 Pixel 7 feels like a major upgrade over the $900 Pixel 7 Pro, and I’d pick it if I could get the base model with a high-end 120Hz screen. Google should scrap the 7 Pro design and make two versions of the Pixel 7 because none of the “premium”design changes it’s made are worth it. Every day I pick up a Pixel 7 and am tempted to switch from Pro because it looks so much nicer.

Speaking of bad trends, let’s talk about mmWave. The worst part of the Pixel 6 Pro’s design was the giant plastic mmWave window on the top edge of the phone. In my white version, it’s a huge white stripe across the top of the phone that doesn’t match the cream-colored backplate or silvery aluminum stripe. The Pixel 7 Pro looks much better, with the notch reduced to a matching color rounded window that only takes up about 40 percent of the top’s length. This is a big improvement.