I got it in-store from best buy not long after launch, seems unlikely it would be a fake, especially when all the advertised exclusive features work (call screen, magic eraser etc).

I went from Samsung S10+ to a pixel 5 which was a huge upgrade. Pixel 5 to pixel 7 pro was a considerably bigger downgrade. After my experience, I’m at least a few generations and a lot of reviews between my next pixel or tensor phone.

P7P:

• overheats with light use

• between 1/2 and 1 days battery life

• persistent screen glare

• worst android UI I’ve seen since maybe my galaxy s3? Genuinely so long I can’t even really be sure.

• terrible build materials. Mad slippy and will break if dropped even a small distance

• worst fingerprint sensor I’ve used.

• most limited customization of any android in recent memory, combined with awful stock ux

To take real estate from notifications (is it somehow a benefit to Google to add scroll interactions?). I’m not sure what the endgame is but the only other thing it achieves is making them always trigger when you’re holding the phone to your ear, which no matter how tinfoil I get I can’t see any potential motivator for that. It’s pure bad design, for the life of me I can’t work it out.

It’s nice to be able to open up an old computer to add more RAM/Storage/etc., but also get that making everything integrated and soldered improves durability and reliability.

If you’re willing to believe that soldering in a hard drive has anything at all to do with reliability I don’t even know what to tell you. The fact they apple will, with a straight face, charge $300+ to upgrade from 256gb of ssd capacity to 512gb should also be a clue…you can get 1tb for that price. and that price gauging on selling the customer parts at over 100% markup is the sole reason they solder them in.

They used to be fantastic, but for various reasons Google have been reducing the quality of their products for some time.

The android 12 update really hurt the UI/UX by limiting customization, adding big obnoxious qs tiles that obstruct notifications for no reason (that I am constantly activating by accident), removing the wifi toggle and wasting home screen real estate with an ‘at a glance’ widget that isn’t useful (it’s like a wish.com version of Google now), you need a custom default program manager to let it open search results in browser without pushing shit apps (like reddit official). Also wasn’t the point of pure android to avoid bloatware? Why am I carrying google TV, YouTube, wallet, Google money, fit, Google one, gpay, spy assistant, lens, meet etc?

As bad as the recent software direction is, the hardware is worse. My pixel 7 pro new has worse battery life than my pixel 5 had after 2 years of constant use, it overheats and throttles doing basic tasks (like maps), the glass back is among the most slippery things I’ve ever touched, the curved screen has an infuriating glare persistent no matter how you hold it, the fingerprint sensor is unreliable and in an awkward place, there’s no capacitive gesture to drop notifications shade and “double tap” gesture meant to replace it flat out doesn’t work. The charging is super slow, the curved screen follows the curved screen trend of breaking easily, all phones in the current line up are too large to use comfortably with one hand, they deleted the headphone jack to sell shit earbuds (yes that was ages ago but it’s still stupid).

All in, I’d trade my pixel 7 pro in for a gen 5 model or earlier in a heartbeat. Been a long time Google/nexus user but however good the old phones were, my next phone won’t have a tensor!