Google on Thursday introduced the google Pixel 7 Pro and 7, the latest high-end smartphone in its Pixel lineup. Like its predecessor, the Pixel 7 Pro stands out primarily for its more advanced camera and larger screen compared to the standard $599 (£599, AU$999) Pixel 7, which was also unveiled on Thursday.
The Pixel 7 Pro starts at $899 (£849, AU$1,299), the same as last year’s Pixel 6 Pro, and preorders for both the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro begin immediately and go on sale on October 13.
The announcement was made during Google’s fall product launch event on Thursday, but the company also announced its new Pixel Watch at the same time.
Google previewed the three products in May this year, but only revealed more details about their pricing, availability, and features at an event on Thursday.
Both phones run on Google’s new Tensor G2 chip and have a slightly updated design with a more prominent metal camera bar on the back.
This is the most important update in Google Pixel. Google has made improvements to the zoom in both phones’ cameras, but only the Pixel 7 Pro has a 48-megapixel telephoto lens and full support for macro photography, which should be something that users will be very happy about.
The Pixel 7 and 7 Pro are part of Google’s efforts to compete with Samsung and Apple, which currently dominate the global smartphone market.
Staying ahead in the smartphone market also means Google’s approach to new phones undercutting its competitors’ prices, focusing on camera quality, and developing unique software features for its phones.
With the Google Pixel 7 Pro, you get a better zoom and macro mode for the camera
Both the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro’s main 50-megapixel camera can crop for a 2x zoom view and 12.5-megapixel resolution photo, Google said in its announcement. We can see that Apple has done exactly the same with its iPhone 14 Pro.
One of the ways Google has chosen to go with the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro’s camera is the zoom feature. Google has added 5x optical zoom compared to last year’s 4x along with other zoom tricks on its Pixel 7 Pro, which is definitely an upgrade.
The Google Pixel 7 Pro can zoom up to 30x digitally, compared to last year’s Pixel 6 Pro’s 20x digital zoom. That means it can zoom up to 10x. That’s more than the iPhone 14 Pro’s 15x maximum, but it doesn’t magnify distant subjects as well as the Galaxy S22 Ultra’s 100x digital zoom.
Google uses the same idea with the Pixel 7 Pro’s dedicated 48-megapixel telephoto camera. It normally shoots at 5x zoom, but we crop the central pixels from the frame to produce a 10x view and a 12-megapixel photo.
But when you zoom between 2.5x and 5x here, the Pixel 7 Pro fuses data from the main and telephoto cameras. Doing this, Google says, allows it to combine detail from the telephoto and main cameras for better image quality than digital zoom alone can provide.
During my brief time with the Google Pixel 7 Pro, I zoomed in at 5x in the Google demo room and tried to take a photo of the detailed architecture on the roof.
The Google Pixel 7 Pro 2022 is getting another additional camera feature from the Pixel 7: a macro photography mode on the Pixel Pro 7, courtesy of the ultrawide camera’s autofocus. The camera automatically enters this mode when you’re setting up a macro shot, but you can also turn it off by tapping the on-screen icon on the camera.