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(Pocket-lint) – Google has officially announced the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, having previously teased the devices at Google I/O in May 2022.
The new devices slide in to replace the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, sticking to much the same design, but making some cosmetic changes for a more attractive and premium overall finish.
That includes highlighting more metal across the camera bar on the back, moving from having an insert in the frame to a more solid solution. All that aluminium is 100 per cent recycled, with the Pixel 7 Pro getting a polished finish, while the Pixel 7 is matte.
The Pixel 7 Pro sticks to a 6.7-inch display, while the smaller Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch display.
Both devices are powered by the new Tensor G2 hardware, as Google continues to walk its own path on hardware, rather than turn to other providers. This puts a focus on security, while also introducing VPN by Google One (coming later in the year), which will enable you to encrypt and anonymise your internet activity to again protect your security.
The Google Pixel 7 will also aim to be the best phone for actually making phone calls, not only filtering out spam calls, but also aiming to clean up background noise on incoming calls.
Most of the attention, however, will be on the cameras, with Google continuing to pursue its computational photography. The Pixel 7 essentially has the same cameras as the Pixel 6, but there’s a new front camera offering 4K video at up to 60fps.
The 7 Pro, however, makes a number of camera changes to move the flagship device forward. The 48-megapixel telephoto now offers 5x optical zoom, and up to 30x Super Res Zoom from its periscope arrangement.
That’s a step forward over the 4x optical zoom of the Pixel 6 Pro. But there’s some more clever tech going into this camera, which will combine data from both the main and telephoto lens to boost the quality of images between 2.5x and 5x zoom where it’s between lenses. This uses a new machine learning model that Google has applied.
That means that when you pinch through the zoom range there’s a lot going on to deliver the best images – from pixel binning with the 1x zoom through to combining data from the camera before you get to straight sensor cropping – all supported by AI and ML upscaling. It’s promising great things.
There’s new stabilisation to support those far-end zoom photos between 20-30X.
Another new photo technology is Photo Unblur. On the Pixel 6 we saw Face Unblur, but Photo Unblur uses a new ML model to remove blurring from photos. That’s going to allow for clear photos when you’re moving or in lower light when handshake might happen. The best news is that this isn’t just limited to photos you take on the Pixel 7 – because this is an ML model, it will work on existing images in your Google Photos library.
There’s also more power put into Night Sight, so it’s going to be much faster than it was before, as well as boosts to video capture on the Pixel 7, including a Cinematic Blur function for a shallow depth of field. You can also shoot 10-bit HDR video and share those with apps like TikTik and Snap, so you’ll get great videos in those apps too.
As expected, this update is as much about Google showing off new software skills – some of which equally get applied to older Pixel models – as it is offering new hardware.
The great thing, however, is that Google isn’t pumping up the prices. The Pixel 7 will cost $599 / £599, while the Pixel 7 Pro will cost $899 / £849.
Pre-orders open immediately, with general availability from 13 October.
Writing by Chris Hall.
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