Why the Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are among 2022’s best smartphones
Live MintGoogle’s Pixel lineup of smartphones have always been about the company’s vision of how Android was best intended to be experienced, but they’ve never been the sort of smartphones to sell at the scale of Google’s Android partners like Samsung or OnePlus. All that’s changed this year, with Mountain View surprisingly launching the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro to India alongside their US debut, at reasonably competitive pricing. Both phones looked and felt premium in the hand, but the smaller Pixel 7 is definitely the easier one to handle with the smaller dimensions and the matte finish frame – the less-than-ergonomic dimensions and the polished frame on the 7 Pro means it’s a slippery customer at the best of times. The smaller size on the Pixel 7 affords it a smaller 6.3-inch full HD+ AMOLED screen compared to the higher-resolution 3120 x 1440-pixel 6.7-inch screen on the Pixel 7 Pro, and other than the difference in refresh rates, both panels look great, offer deep blacks and vivid colors and ample brightness to enjoy high dynamic range media on OTT streaming services. Taking this optical zoom and Google's Super Res Zoom image processing, the Pixel 7 Pro can go all the way till 30x zoom while the Pixel 7 is limited to 8x, and while this is significantly lesser reach than the 100x zoom on the Samsung S22 Ultra, the Pixel 7 Pro’s results at 10-20x are very usable and bested only by the Samsung.