Google's Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro up for pre-order

Google held an in-person event in New York on the 6th of October and launched the Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, the Pixel Watch and showcased a tablet that will come next year. The smartphones are already up for pre-order on Flipkart for ₹84,999 and ₹59,999. Limited-time special offers are also available.

It is not known whether the watch and tablet will be brought to India. Users in India, who had not seen availability of all the Pixel 6 series phones, will this time be able to buy the new smartphones from October 13.

The Pixel 7 is available in Snow, Obsidian and Lemongrass colourways and comes with a 6.3-inch display that is 25% brighter for better visibility outdoors, according to Google. Pixel 7 Pro has a 6.7-inch display, a polished aluminium frame and a camera bar that matches its Snow, Obsidian, and Hazel colours. The aluminium enclosure for both phones is made of 100% recycled content.

The two smartphones are working with Android 13 and Google'’s Tensor G2, the next-gen processor custom built for Pixel with Google's machine learning and speech recognition .

This is intended to make the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro faster, more efficient, more secure and even more helpful. It delivers Pixel's enhanced photo and video quality with next-gen Super Res zoom, up to two times faster Night Sight processing, sharper photos with Face Unblur and new features like Cinematic Blur.

Rick Osterloh, senior vice president, Devices & Services at Google, wrote on the company's blog: "This is what we have been building up to for a while: delivering a lineup of beautifully designed Pixel phones, watches and earbuds that work together to understand your needs and deliver the helpfulness you expect from Google. We believe Pixel isn't only a phone experience, it's a personal, intelligent, cohesive computing experience." With the portfolio of products now including phones, smart speakers, earphones, watch and tablet, Google too will have an ecosystem of its own with which devices will work together more seamlessly.

More camera features

Users can extend camera range with Super Res Zoom up to 8x on Pixel 7, and up to 30x on Pixel 7 Pro, to get sharper images from a distance. The phones also offer optical quality similar to a dedicated 2x telephoto lens for Pixel 7 and a 10x telephoto lens for Pixel 7 Pro, so users can creatively frame their shot at multiple magnifications while maintaining high quality.

The Pixel 7 Pro also comes with Macro Focus, which results in HDR+ photo quality from as close as three centimetres away. Photo Unblur, a Google Photos feature coming first to Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, uses machine learning to improve blurry pictures — even old ones. One can also touch up those photos and easily remove distractions with Magic Eraser, the object remover feature.

An interesting feature is the Guided Frame, meant for those who have low-vision. They can capture selfies with a combination of precise audio guidance, high-contrast visual animations and haptic feedback which will help position more precisely for a shot. Videos are also upgraded with the new 10-bit HDR so users can record brighter, higher contrast videos with wider colour ranges, according to Google.

On the Pixel smartphones, Google has also enhanced the use of speech recognition technology, so that the phones will be able to transcribe audio messages on the Messages app. Texting will apparently also be more enjoyable, with Assistant voice typing, now automatically suggesting emojis that are relevant to messages. Users can also search for emojis with their voice.

Google promises Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will be the most secure and private Pixel phones yet compared to previous ones. With Tensor G2 and the Titan M2 security chip, Pixel is built with multiple layers of security to help keep users safe and secure. Titan M2 makes the phones more resilient to sophisticated attacks. The phones also come with a faster, more secure under-display fingerprint reader and an added convenience of Face Unlock thanks to advanced machine learning models for face recognition, helping users quickly access what they need with just a glance.