New phone rant

Camera

My understanding is the camera sensor hasn’t changed which seems a bit disappointing since this is my only camera, but maybe the lenses are better and there is probably more post-processing going on, so perhaps the pictures are supposed to be higher quality, but they all seem to turn out darker. The night shots do seem to look nicer, though.

The bump for the cameras on the back of the phone is ridiculous in size and has sharp edges. I was hoping to avoid putting a case on the phone, but it was impossible to hold comfortably with the camera setup. I’m fairly certain I would prefer the phone be a constant thickness; maybe fit a larger battery in or a 3.5mm audio jack or something.

The front-facing camera is also slotted into the screen, which is ugly and annoying as there is a black circular void on the display if anything tries to use it full screen.

Biometric unlock

I find that the face unlock is the least reliable feature on the phone. Because it exists, I always try to use it and I have been growing increasingly frustrated at watching it fail to detect my face in all but ideal lighting scenarios. I think I’ll disable this feature to avoid waiting for it to fail and trying another unlock strategy.

The fingerprint sensor was moved from the back of the phone to the front, under the screen using some sort of witchcraft, I assume. I always had a few failures reading my fingerprint on the Pixel 3, but on the Pixel 7 not only do the failures seem more frequent; but because it is under the screen it is not always available as an option so if I “swipe up” from the lock screen, I lose the ability to enter my fingerprint as it is showing me a prompt for a PIN instead. With the Pixel 3 dedicated fingerprint reader you could still enter a fingerprint to unlock in this scenario. It was always kind of convenient to be able to unlock the Pixel 3 without touching the screen.

In short, unlocking my phone has made me more frustrated and I almost always have to enter my PIN now.

Speakers

The Pixel 3 has two front-facing speakers, one below the screen and one above. This made it a great device for watching media as the sound was of decent quality and volume and was directed towards your face. The Pixel 7 has a speaker on the bottom of the phone so not only is the sound quieter, and isn’t directed to the person trying to consume it but it is very easy to cover with your hand while holding the phone in landscape, as I like to do when watching videos.

Conclusion

I think this phone is worse in nearly every regard than phone it replaces. Perhaps I should have tried to get the battery and USB port replaced.