Oh my lord it is STUNNING.
I love it!! Congrats GM!
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Pixel 7 / Pixel 7 Pro
- Thread starter jamezr
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I love it!! Congrats GM!
It's nice and light! It FEELS Pixelly and I mean that in the best way possible! It reminds me of Snowball.
Here it is with the free case:
Love everything about it. Great looking device!
Battery life with standard refresh rate has been great. Unlike a lot of people I don't mind the lower refresh rate so I haven't turned it to the variable 90 hz refresh rate. From what I read, doing that could significantly negatively impact battery life. I'll try it eventually but right now I am busy setting it up and testing it out so I don't want to have to stop and charge it. I already ran it down to 49% and charged it back up to 79%. I'm using an old Pixel charger I had lying around.
So far it's run slightly warm but not hot yet doing the usual setup stuff.
I kind of miss having optical zoom on it like I've got for my Pixel 6 Pro. I probably will miss that camera when I trade it in. But when I know I'm going to want to zoom I've got the S23 Ultra and even the 14 Pro Max for that. What I'm getting in return is that cute Pixel vibe I missed from my days with Snowball, my Pixel 2. It's kind of hard to explain the kind of magic spell that phone cast on me.
So far it's run slightly warm but not hot yet doing the usual setup stuff.
I kind of miss having optical zoom on it like I've got for my Pixel 6 Pro. I probably will miss that camera when I trade it in. But when I know I'm going to want to zoom I've got the S23 Ultra and even the 14 Pro Max for that. What I'm getting in return is that cute Pixel vibe I missed from my days with Snowball, my Pixel 2. It's kind of hard to explain the kind of magic spell that phone cast on me.
Pretty sweet looking phone!
You will have to give us your overall impressions.
How does it perform? How is battery life?
How does the back plate feel and weight?
Really nice looking color. Impressed.
I had a Pixel 4a and I understand that vibe you are talking about. The size and feel of the device are just so nice.
I have been using my Pixel 7 Pro today as a change from the s23 ultra.
I love the ultra but there is just something about a Pixel phone that feels to me like the Apple iPhone of Android phones. The simplicity of the UI, the way everything works and lack of third party apps I really like.
The Tensor G2 is a decent processor and it handles most of everything I do with ease. Although the battery life is not as good as the s23u it is still very respectable and I easily get through a day of heavy use out of it.
Compared to the s23 ultra it just feels lighter and a bit smaller.
I really can't wait for the Pixel 8 Pro to release as that is something I am really curious about. I have enjoyed the Pixel 7 Pro a lot and I think a couple of the things that bother me with it might just get resolved with the new model.
I don't know what it is about the a series Pixels. I think they are really good phones and for the price some of the best Android phones you can get.
Really like your 7a. The blue model peaked my interest. My biggest gripe with the 7 Pro besides the Tensor G2 (at times) is the colors. If we would have had a coral or blue version on the 7 Pro I would have been even happier. I really hope Google uses at least one of the 7a colors like blue or coral for the 8 series.
Yeah so far the battery life is awesome but I'm not running the variable refresh rate most people like.
I forget the back plate isn't glass. It feels the same as glass to me. It's light without the case. A bit heavy with, as there's a lot of plastic to this case.
I am loving it so far. The camera is good but I haven't really put it through its paces yet.
So far I seem okay using this display. MKBHD said there was a lot of off axis color shift and rainbow banding on his display. That sounds like the display on my first s23 Ultra. This one has been nice and even. I've got no complaints about it so far.
My iphone 14 Pro Max display has been giving me a lot of discomfort the last couple of weeks. I really want to just put my main sim in this phone and move on.
Lol but I haven't tested call quality yet.
Also there is a very weird problem that my husband has tracked down to Apple being at fault.
If I send him a text from this phone, it does reach him but when he replies to me, the reply doesn't come to my Pixel. It goes instead to my iphone and Apple watch!
And my texts from this Pixel look like they're coming from my iphone! We even get blue bubbles.
There's nothing wrong with my Pixel. Nor my carrier. It's because he has both of my numbers down in his contacts and somehow when he replies iMessage defaults to sending the reply to my number that's associated with my iCloud account and not to the one I use for Android. It's not a bug, it's just how Apple works.
We never noticed it before because we did our texts to both of my phone numbers since he never knew which phone I would be on. So all of our texts in which my Android sim was involved were group chats in which both my iphone number and Android number were part of the chat.
So we can continue to do that so I can get my texts to come through on all my phones. But if I want to text someone else, then I will have to have them set up a similar group chat involving both of my phones.
I'm really beginning to hate iMessage.
I think when it comes to electronics these days it seems to be a bit of a lottery on the hardware you get regardless of manufacturer.
My Pixel 7 Pro knock on wood doesn't seem to have some of the hardware issues others have complained about. It has been a solid device so far so I am guessing you got a good one on your Pixel too.
If you are going to use your Android phone for a longer period of time then you may want to deregister your phone number from iMessages. You have to do it on Apple's website. If you don't you may have issues receiving and sending texts. Before I deregistered my phone number I would send texts to my ex wife on her iPhone and she wouldn't get them and vice versa. It was an odd and intermittent issue.
It is really a pain that Apple makes compatibility such an issue once you leave the walled garden and puts a bad taste in my mouth. I have heard people on this forum argue in Apple's favor about this issue but they always just use an iPhone.
I suspect that even with the variable refresh rate your battery life won't degrade all that much if at all. If it does it might just be an optimization issue that will get worked out in an update.
In any case I am happy you like the phone. It seems pretty sweet to me. I actually prefer the glasstic or plastic phone backs as they are much more durable if dropped, generally feel just like glass and are a lot lighter. The only draw back is that glass is better for the environment.
It's really nice not having to worry about glass on the back. And it can still do wireless charging, albeit incredibly slowly. I stopped charging phones wirelessly anyway after finding my a couple of my past iphones burning hot to the touch on their MagSafe charger. My husband uses MagSafe and other wireless chargers work no issues though. For me, I just prefer to plug them in for awhile.
But plastic can break, too. And it can definitely get nasty gouges and scratches that glass can resist. So I am definitely keeping a case on it.
My husband just called me from his car and call clarity and quality was good on both sides of the call.
I really like this phone and want to make it my main phone. But I do have a dependency on how Apple Maps works with my Apple Watch. I use Apple Pay and I use sign in with Apple on several places like Etsy and eBay.
I guess I'm just overexcited at how cute this phone is. 😆
I'm having tons of nasty nerve pain with my 14 Pro Max so I am going to switch to my 12 mini or SE3 after the graduation ceremonies are over. I usually go to my small iphones for the summer anyway. And they are adorable, especially my 12 mini. I just hope that phone won't give me a headache. My SE3 LCD display causes a white shimmering curtain of sorts to form at the peripheral vision and eventually it starts to intrude enough I'm kind of blind when I walk around. I start bumping into people at the supermarket. But at least it doesn't hurt. It's a form of migraine. My husband gets this shimmer, too. But not from his phone, it is some form of migraine aura.
Nobody can figure out why the LCD would do that to my nervous system. There's no pwm. Temporal dithering? I don't know.
But I have to use it a lot to get that effect. It should be fine to use for light summer use, especially if I do most of my web surfing on the 7a and my Samsungs.
My vacation phone will still be my S23 Ultra.
If you need Apple pay then you need Apple pay. Apple Maps is good but I find Google Maps better. If you got a Galaxy watch then you could use it with your Samsung and Pixel? I know you said certain areas Apple Maps works better but at least in my experience I find that Google maps updates so frequently that you get new coverage all the time. Might be worth just trying occasionally to see and maybe there is some way to report what isn't working for you. Knowing Google they really want to help you use their navigation since location data is extremely valuable to them.
I find both Apple and Google maps to be excellent though and I actually use Samsung wallet and have a credit card with sofi. Seems to work for me while I could never get Apple pay to work with my bank.
Funny how different our experiences can be.
Personally though I like just using cards.
I have never used wireless charging because it is an inherently flawed technology. I understand why people use it and don't have any criticism for them, rather it is just a personal opinion. The problem with wireless charging is a lot of the charge or electricity transfer is lost in heat. Heat is a byproduct of wireless charging and the faster it is the more heat it generates and the less efficient it is. On top of that heat is the enemy of lithium ion batteries so I just avoid it altogether. Wired charging in this day may seem old school but it is the fastest and most efficient way to charge a device.
I really hope that mainstream device manufacturers from Android OEM'S to Apple start using high frequency displays like Xiaomi and other Chinese OEM's are doing with like 1250 instead of 240 PWM. I think it would help everyone. I think a part of the widespread depression I see is related to the frequency of these screens. Headaches and other mental health issues might be related to the exposure we all have to these screens and we don't even know it. There really hasn't been enough study to determine the effects on mental health with us looking at a flickering screen all day. Nothing in nature does this and our eyes haven't evolved to look at the artificial light sources we are exposed to from LED lighting, fluorescent lighting, LCD, OLED, etc. It all might have a culmutive effect but there is no studies to observe over time what this is doing to us. Also all the emf we are exposed to could even be interacting or magnifying this effect.
I could be way off base here but I just have a gut feeling that these things all together over time have a negative impact.
I am on a p7pro now but I prefer apple maps because they actually have my house on it. I know it's a recentish build(2011) but come on Google. My postcode\zip is a mile north up the road according to Google.. despite me reporting it in Dec when I got my pixel
My iPhone display also makes me super sleepy and fatigued. Even the ones that didn’t give me headaches did that! It took me a couple of years to figure that out!
One thing I didn’t like about Google maps was it was referring to some of the roads by their numbers instead of their names. When you’re driving backroads you don’t necessarily see the route number signs but just the local names. It can get confusing. At least to me.
Of course local directions given by humans are turn left at that house with the metal chicken sculpture and turn right at the house with the pit bull with the tiger stripes.
I totally get it. I wonder if waze would work better. I know you can use it on iphone and Android? I have never used it but before Apple Maps was good my ex wife used to use waze on her iPhone? Then you could use waze on any device?My iPhone display also makes me super sleepy and fatigued. Even the ones that didn’t give me headaches did that! It took me a couple of years to figure that out!
One thing I didn’t like about Google maps was it was referring to some of the roads by their numbers instead of their names. When you’re driving backroads you don’t necessarily see the route number signs but just the local names. It can get confusing. At least to me.
Of course local directions given by humans are turn left at that house with the metal chicken sculpture and turn right at the house with the pit bull with the tiger stripes.
I love those kind of directions. Wouldn't it be fun if you had a landmark option for directions in these navigation apps. 😂 Lol.
Waze is definitely available on the Google Play store. I've used it a few times on iOS awhile back. It doesn't get very good recent reviews on the Google Play Store. Apparently the ads are obnoxious.
I suppose I could still just use my iphone for GPS navigation. I need the large display anyway since I don't have Android Auto or CarPlay available on either of the two vehicles I regularly drive.
I am really enjoying this 7a. At first I was making a ton of typos on it, but I am adjusting to the smaller keyboard area.
It's supposed to be a 6.1" display like my iphone 11, but it's proportioned so much nicer for ergonomic comfort than my iphone 11. It's a little narrower and a lot taller.
I'm going to keep testing it out and pushing it harder than I normally push my phones because I'm seriously scheming to make this my main phone, especially for the summer. There are some real inconveniences involved in doing that, though, so I have to think about it.
So far, we are hitting it off like old friends. I feel like I got Snowball back, but with a much better display. Lol, poor Snowball had a messed up display from day one. It's funny how that didn't impact my fondness for that phone.
I don't have a name for this phone, though. Snowball arrived on an icy cold day in winter and was a white Pixel 2. I just took it out of the box and pronounced it Snowball. I've named other phones but nothing quite became a character like Snowball did. I have very specific, very happy memories tied to that phone.
Sigh. If only I could get my porgs back on this Pixel. @jamezr knows what I mean! Darn Google and their habit of dropping the cool things they make.
Yeah I had a Chromebook slate tablet that Google made and discontinued a few months later. I got it on a great discount with the keyboard free. Other than the processor being a little slow and keyboard attachment being a little finicky it was a really great combination. The screen was amazing.
Darn Google and their discontinued stuff!
As for nick names it is such a a personal thing. Snowball is pretty great though. Since it is red, red hot? Cherry bomb? Big red like the soda? Maybe little red? I don't know. 😂 Lol
I don't know what you can do in terms of navigation. Last time I used waze was a long time ago.
Anyway, enjoy your Pixel. It is a pretty sweet phone!
It’s not really red. Its more orange with a muted aspect that reminds me of salmon color. It’s almost the exact same color of a parrot cichlid fish or some goldfish I’ve seen.
Maybe Sunny. Lol but then I start thinking of Sonny Bono. That tells you how old I am!
If you’re talking about the Pixel 7a it’s a good value if you can get a decent trade in value for any existing phone. The deal with the free Pixel A buds and the free case ends on the 21st according to an email I got.
I must say it’s really nice to get a very nice case and very nice earbuds bundled in with the phone. When I buy an iPhone I get the feeling Apple is begrudging me the cardboard box the phone arrives in. I know they wanted to take away the Apple stickers because I got a survey question from them once asking me if I would be okay with that. No, I would not be okay with that. Those stickers are free advertising for them when we stick them on notebooks and whatnot. Jeez, let us have at least that, Apple!
I know it’s just a limited time promo offer but I really appreciated it. And I don’t think $499 is too high for the quality of the phone I received, but I don’t think they should go higher than that.
I bought from the Google store using my Amazon credit card so I accrued enough points to get a heavily discounted (perhaps even free? google case for my phone from the Google Store. I do have to wait 30 days to get the points so Google knows I’m keeping the phone. And I can spend the Amazon points on whatever I need.
I forget what my phone costs me after the trade-in is processed. I think $257-ish? That’s not bad for getting a phone and all needed/wanted accessories plus points I can spend at Amazon.
Edit to clarify: the Amazon card earns me points I can spend at Amazon. I’m a Google One member so I also earn a separate batch of points on my purchases that I can use towards other purchases.
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Interesting difference in preset white balance which is the second photo and what I manually selected to precisely match what my eyes were seeing. Preset is colder. I had to manually warm it up quite a bit to make it accurate. Fortunately it's so easy to adjust white balance. Just tap on the subject and the controls come up on screen. They're sliders.
I had done a similar experiment with my Pixel 6 Pro and it's the same result.
My 14 Pro Max colors are also cold-ish and way over sharpened to the point “details”are visible that barely exist to the naked eye. I'll add that photo in later.
iPhone 14 Pro Max. This photo lies. I promise you, looking at this flower, you can not see the little veins and textures at all. That level of detail is just not visible to the naked eye. AI is emphasizing and in some cases creating “detail” that is NOT visible. Those spots on the cream color portion of the flower were there, though. This photo was taken a different day and some dirt had blown up onto the flower when mulch was added to the garden. People are likely to look at the photos and think oh, the iPhone photo is just focused properly and the Pixel photos are blurry. No, the Pixel ones are not soft focusing the subject, except perhaps at the top section of the flower. The petals are truly delicate looking and soft looking. In other words, real life looked a bit blurry! I held the display of my phone next to the flower each time I took the photo to see what was matching and what wasn’t. Leaf color was closest to the first Pixel photo shown.
Over the top in every way…S23 Ultra:
Pixel 6 Pro…pick of the litter. Most accurate and best focused. But only after I adjusted the white balance as I was lining up the shot:
I had done a similar experiment with my Pixel 6 Pro and it's the same result.
My 14 Pro Max colors are also cold-ish and way over sharpened to the point “details”are visible that barely exist to the naked eye. I'll add that photo in later.
iPhone 14 Pro Max. This photo lies. I promise you, looking at this flower, you can not see the little veins and textures at all. That level of detail is just not visible to the naked eye. AI is emphasizing and in some cases creating “detail” that is NOT visible. Those spots on the cream color portion of the flower were there, though. This photo was taken a different day and some dirt had blown up onto the flower when mulch was added to the garden. People are likely to look at the photos and think oh, the iPhone photo is just focused properly and the Pixel photos are blurry. No, the Pixel ones are not soft focusing the subject, except perhaps at the top section of the flower. The petals are truly delicate looking and soft looking. In other words, real life looked a bit blurry! I held the display of my phone next to the flower each time I took the photo to see what was matching and what wasn’t. Leaf color was closest to the first Pixel photo shown.
Over the top in every way…S23 Ultra:
Pixel 6 Pro…pick of the litter. Most accurate and best focused. But only after I adjusted the white balance as I was lining up the shot:
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Everything on the s23 ultra is oversaturated. The screen, the photos. 😂 Lol
But you can adjust things to a point and some people prefer adding more pop to real life.
I kind of go back and forth. I will use my Pixel 7 Pro and the screen is more color accurate and less saturated as are the photos. Sometimes when switching back and forth from the s23u it feels washed out and other times I feel like my eyes need a rest from the punchy colors.
I never really liked my iPhone Pro Max screen. I could never get the yellow tint out of the display even when just using native display settings. My iPad looks much better as does my Mac. Photos were decent but without a good zoom were nothing great.
The iPhone 14 pro max most likely has a much better camera than my old 13 Pro Max.
However in the past iPhone has always had a decent camera with fairly natural color balance. The AI that has been added to post processing can help but as you have illustrated can also screw with the real world picture you are trying to capture.
Pixel definitely has the best AI post processing algorithm. It is miles above everyone else.
But you can adjust things to a point and some people prefer adding more pop to real life.
I kind of go back and forth. I will use my Pixel 7 Pro and the screen is more color accurate and less saturated as are the photos. Sometimes when switching back and forth from the s23u it feels washed out and other times I feel like my eyes need a rest from the punchy colors.
I never really liked my iPhone Pro Max screen. I could never get the yellow tint out of the display even when just using native display settings. My iPad looks much better as does my Mac. Photos were decent but without a good zoom were nothing great.
The iPhone 14 pro max most likely has a much better camera than my old 13 Pro Max.
However in the past iPhone has always had a decent camera with fairly natural color balance. The AI that has been added to post processing can help but as you have illustrated can also screw with the real world picture you are trying to capture.
Pixel definitely has the best AI post processing algorithm. It is miles above everyone else.
Got my Slickdeals $2.08 case today for my Pixel 7.
See the difference in color and how my Ringke yellowed in only 6 momths.
Thank you Grumpy Mom for the tip, but I did get the app and sign up and get numerous emails Dailey on other deals. Sometimes it's annoying.
See the difference in color and how my Ringke yellowed in only 6 momths.
Thank you Grumpy Mom for the tip, but I did get the app and sign up and get numerous emails Dailey on other deals. Sometimes it's annoying.
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I had the 4a and I thought that phone was great.
Every now and then it had a hesitation but it had a lessor GPU chip. Fingerprint sensor was super fast and accurate and loved it on the back as opposed to in the screen.
If I didn't have the P7 I'd absolutely get a 7a since it has wireless charging now and the G2 chip.
FP sensor in this P7 is trash. ....but I don't care. I just use face unlock. Also not sure if it's just my phone but Dailey Mail app for instance, always freezes on the P7. Also a car forum I go to,.... it freezes up as well and restarts the phone on its own. Didn't ever happen on my 4a.
Every now and then it had a hesitation but it had a lessor GPU chip. Fingerprint sensor was super fast and accurate and loved it on the back as opposed to in the screen.
If I didn't have the P7 I'd absolutely get a 7a since it has wireless charging now and the G2 chip.
FP sensor in this P7 is trash. ....but I don't care. I just use face unlock. Also not sure if it's just my phone but Dailey Mail app for instance, always freezes on the P7. Also a car forum I go to,.... it freezes up as well and restarts the phone on its own. Didn't ever happen on my 4a.