Battery One Blog

At a glance, Google’s Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro might seem like minor upgrades from the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro. But I got a chance to spend some time with the phones at Google’s launch event in Brooklyn, and while they look similar, several under-the-hood improvements should help differentiate them from their predecessors in at least a few key ways.

Appearance: Mostly the Same
When held side by side, the new Pixels hardly look different from the old Pixels. These phones are tall and slim glass sandwiches, with Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on the front and back, and recycled aluminum in between. The glass features rather steep curves along both the back and front edges. While this smoothes over the feel of the phones when holding them, it erodes the screen real estate a little bit.

The Pixels feel strong and nicely made. They don’t meet any sort of rugged specifications, but they are rated IP68 for protection from dust and water (as all flagship phones should be).

The color palette is a little different this year. The smaller Pixel 7 is available in Lemongrass, Obsidian, or Snow, while the larger 7 Pro is available in Hazel, Obsidian, or Snow. Snow and Obsidian might as well be called white and black, while Lemongrass is a pale yellow and Hazel is a deep, nutty, brownish gray. All of the shades feature a glossy finish rather than matte, which some may like and others may not. The phones are certainly a bit slippery and heavy.

One of the most distinctive visual features of the phones is the Camera Bar that rides across the rear panel. The Camera Bar was a raised glass ledge on the Pixel 6 family. This year, Google replaces the glass with an aluminum strap that should be less breakable. That said, I liked the glass and am not sold on the aluminum look yet.

The screens are excellent. The Pixel 7 has a 6.3-inch screen with 2,400 by 1,080 pixels and a 90Hz refresh rate. That’s a little smaller than last year’s, but just as quick with the refreshing. The 7 Pro’s display is larger at 6.7 inches and more pixel-rich with 3,210 by 1,440 pixels. It’s also faster, with an LTPO OLED that cycles from 1Hz up to 120Hz to balance power use and smooth experiences. They both look luscious in person, with bright color and plenty of brightness (1,400 and 1,500 nits for the 7 and 7 Pro, respectively). Google keeps the bezels in check, though there’s a slight chin on both phones. The selfie camera is visible in a small punch hole at the top.

Buttons are kept to a minimum. There’s just a power key and volume toggle on the right edge, the same as last year’s phones. The action of the keys is very good, though the buttons have a rather flat profile that might make them harder to locate in a hurry. You won’t find a headphone jack, but there’s a speedy USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port on the bottom. A physical SIM tray is tucked into the left side of the phone, and the Pixels also support eSIM.

Engines of Creation
The new Google Tensor G2 system-on-a-chip is what makes the Pixel family go. Google explained all the upgrades in its custom chip this year, though they are not as extravagant as they could be. This octa-core chip has two performance cores, two midrange cores, and four efficiency cores to balance out tasks and battery life. Surprisingly, Google is sticking with the Cortex X1 for its high-performance cores rather than the newer X2. The company also keeps clock speed improvements to a minimum. The Tensor G2 also gets an improved Titan M2 security coprocessor, a second-generation Tensor Processing Unit, and other nips and tucks—all of which are meant to help with features that rely on machine learning and artificial intelligence.

It’s hard to glean just how improved the performance is after only a few moments, but we tested some of the new camera features and came away impressed. For example, Photo Unblur can take old, out-of-focus photos, apply machine learning algorithms, and sharpen them up in a way you might not think was possible. The camera now also supports Cinematic Blur when shooting video, which allows the camera to focus sharply on the subject and softly blur the background. While the iPhone and other Android phones have offered this feature for a while, it’s nice to see it come to the Pixel line.

Other under-the-hood goodies include upgraded 5G, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth radios, and expanded GPS support. We can’t wait to explore these features in detail as we spend more time with the phones.

The Pixels ship with Android 13, of course, which is further enhanced by the stock software experience available to Google’s own devices.

The phones are available for preorder now and reach store shelves on October 15. The Pixel 7 starts at $599 and the Pixel 7 Pro starts at $899. We look forward to testing them, so make sure to check back soon for our full reviews. Until then, head over to our hands on with the Pixel Watch, Google’s first smartwatch, to see how it stacks up to offerings from Apple and Samsung.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>Replacement Google Smartphone Battery

Expectations have been running exceptionally high for Apple’s new M2 processor to outpace Intel’s best CPUs, but in the end, the M2 won’t beat Intel’s fastest chips. That was the news from Apple’s WWDC keynote Monday.

The new 8-core M2 processor will appear in a redesigned MacBook Air, as well as in an updated MacBook Pro laptop. The M2 features 50 percent more memory bandwidth than the M1, and CPU performance is 18 percent faster, Apple stated.

But despite its cutting edge 5nm TSMC process and 20 billion transistors, Apple actually said the new M2 is slower than Intel’s best chips.

Obviously, Apple wasn’t emphasizing that narrative, and its performance slide below shows the new M2 besting an Intel 10-core Core i7-1255U in a Samsung Galaxy Book 2 360.

What exactly Apple is claiming the M2 is faster in, well, we don’t know, as the company has never publicly defined the meaning of its performance criteria. We have no doubt it’s based on reality, as public companies don’t make things up in fear of lawsuits, and the original M1 is a stunningly fast chip.

When the M1 came out, Intel’s best CPUs were pretty elderly—but today is a different story. Intel’s new 12th gen CPUs are actually quite competitive against Intel’s key adversary AMD, as well as its side enemy, Apple.

That much can be seen in Apple’s second slide, which I’m pleasantly surprised to show off, as Apple actually admits the new M2 is slower than the 12-core Core i7-1260P in an MSI Prestige 14 Evo laptop. Apple should also be lauded for showing the full performance graph, as it took a lot of flak for essentially truncating performance of Nvdia’s GPUs to make the M1 Ultra look more powerful. So, yes, shocker: Apple actually says the Intel Core i7 is faster.

Obviously, it’s not all just about raw performance, and Apple’s main point is it can offer outstanding performance with the M2 at a fraction of the power consumption of an Intel Core i7-1260P CPU. That’s actually been Apple’s key strength, since it can’t lean on the “we’re so much faster” argument anymore.

I won’t be petty and belabor the point that it’s not a shock a 5nm chip is more efficient than a 10nm chip. But I’m sure someone will do so on Reddit, YouTube comments or Twitter. In the end, if you’re into longer battery life, you have to seriously consider a MacBook as an option.

But I do want to point out a fallacy of anyone arguing a Core i7-1260P is a full-time power hog. Intel’s mantra of late has been to push extremely high boost clocks for a few microseconds or milliseconds to increase responsiveness. In reality, that MSI Prestige 14 Evo would coast along at low power usage, and when you click on a browser link, it could spike up to 55 watts for a fraction of a second and then settle down again to low power use.

I don’t want to appear partisan and only show off the split wins by Apple on the M2. One area where Apple appears to dominate is in graphics. With its additional graphics cores, Apple says it can outperform the Samsung Galaxy Book2 360 with a Core i7-1255U by a whopping 2.3x while using less power, too.

That’s something to be lauded, as Intel’s Iris Xe graphics, although older, are a huge improvement over its UHD graphics. This last point is something sure to irk AMD fans who are still riding high by how surprising the new Ryzen 6000-series is performing. With its RDNA2 graphics cores and 6nm process, it’s currently easily outpacing Intel’s Iris Xe as well.

How would the M2 fare against an AMD Ryzen 7 6800U? That’s something we’re curious to find out.

In the end, the M2 looks to an impressive sequel to the M2, and in its very tight coupled ecosystem of software and hardware, a pretty awesome upgrade for Mac fans who haven’t even made the switch to M1 yet.