Pixel 7 Pro comes from an S21 Ultra 5g (Day 9)

I think I’ve been a Pixel 7 Pro user now for nine days. It’s taken about this amount of time to get everything sorted out, but this isn’t particularly uncommon for the amount of apps and connected accounts I have. It’s actually one of the reasons I stopped writing root articles – the insane amount of time it takes to restore my accounts.

Over the past nine days I did an upgrade/side downgrade depending on how you want to consider it from my Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G to the Pixel 7 Pro. I was relatively happy with the S21 except for a crack in the screen and the feeling that the device was choking on some basic functions like message notification delays, which I learned the Pixel 7 Pro also did on day one. Really, screen and text messages were the whole reason I…don’t care.

I’m not entirely sure how much of the speed increase I feel on the Pixel 7 Pro is due to software differences, or Google’s hardware, but the Pixel 7 Pro is smooth. Notice the extra O’s there.

Voice to text is very usable now, although I want to emphasize this – it was really bad to understand me for about two days. When I read it, the voice to text uses local learning as well as a server side… it mostly taught me and I can now speak at a normal clip to it. I think I’ll try to film a video of me reading something to it and the S21 to highlight the differences in how each understands or doesn’t understand me. I mean, could be the microphone, could be something else, but I can talk at a normal speed and the Pixel 7 Pro picks it up pretty much right. True enough that editing takes no longer than swiping it out.

Apps launch faster than on the S21, but they’re slower and look buggier. I’m not sure how much of this is processor, Android 13 vs Android 12, or what. I’ve noticeably had app crashes on the Pixel 7 Pro that I haven’t seen on the S21 since the first few days of the last OS update. Bleeding edge, I guess you get burned sometimes.

I had some interesting issues with fingerprints – I’m still on the fence about this but strongly suspect my issues were the following – screen protector. Said screen protector worked perfectly fine for two days with fingerprint unlock. There was a light sticky film at the fingerprint lock that changed even during use with heat applied from the display side and became an obstruction. Will stress this – it worked perfectly for two days after applying the screen protector. I’ve never had a screen protector go bad before. I believe this was the case. It has been off for a day and so far seems to be working normally.

The useless data transfer

Setup and data transfer were as usual sub par and a pretty bad experience. Data transfer cable applied, APKs from old phone copied over and a few of the apps actually made it with accounts intact. Most did not. Once the 100+ apps were transferred, the 54 or so I hadn’t used in a month or two all had to be updated from Google Play. 20+ of them that I used ended up with updates also not showing up on the S21.

I had to log back into five banks (work, husband) three games, 9 home control/smart device admins, multiple email accounts, I wiped and lost all progress on Text Express but that may have been my fault (their support was able to fix it because I took screenshots of a whole bunch of stuff, including my ID when I did the review,) Paypal, Venmo, Cash app, etc.

I mean, I want the banking stuff safe…I do, but the whole “transfer” could have been done by the S21 sending a list of apps to the Pixel Pro 7 and just having it install them, because that’s basically it that happened. Everything had an update even though my S21 showed nothing had an update.

That camera that is

This one is interesting, and I’ll show my biases here – for what I do in nature, the Galaxy S21 Ultra 5G is probably a significantly better camera for almost everything except photos of my kids and my folks. I can take pictures of the moon, I can boca out of the children in portrait mode, etc.

For standard shots of people, the Pixel 7 Pro feels like it kicks the S21s but. This is a “feel” thing. I don’t have a side by side but will again this week – we’ve had some gloomy cloudy days, not really interested in comparing gloomy grays.

The only issue I really have is that the Pixel 7 Pro seems to save these images at a relatively poor level of compression.

The image above is from an HDR 24-bit image that the Pixel 7 Pro created. Pressed down, looks fine-like. Very small pictures (under 2 me,) that lack details. Looks like the options are RAW format or this without quality sliders.

Honestly, for normal use I think the feel and response and what is produced in general is good. Yes, I know my stance on the MyFirst cameras, but the pictures here are nice and small, and the pictures there were bad and huge.

Pixel 7 Pro: Not great in default detail settings.

Zoooooom

The S21 wins on total zoom, but the 30x digital zoom does quite well on the Pixel 7 Pro. Below are the photos on another cloudy and gloomy day from 0.5 to 5 camera, then 30x digital zoom.

However, the Pixel 7 Pro can’t take a photo of the moon in any way that I’ve found other than during the day.

Pretty easy

It is considerably lighter than the S21. Part of this is due to a slightly smaller screen size, but the S21 came in at 227 grams (8 oz), the Pixel 7 Pro at 212 (7.48 oz). 7% lighter may not seem like much, but my pinky is happy. 1.5% less.

Chippy

I became interested in how the Tensor G2 chip stacked up as the chipset on the S21 had higher gHz numbers on the Snapdragon 888… and there’s a whole article or two on why gHz doesn’t matter and what areas a chip excels in. I’m going to do my much-hated “feels like” review here and say that it feels about on par with what I use it for with the S21 Ultra, although based on this it’s about 2% slower. Antutu says it’s 1% slower.

Remember children, what you use a device for matters. If you shoot 4K 120FPS video, the Pixel 7 Pro is not your camera. 4K 60FPS for sure.

General – Content at the moment

I’m annoyed that there are no quality settings. However, I consider the launch a step down from Samsung for what I used it for and how I used to use it I’m significantly faster with Google Launcher. Significant. That search field really rules.

Would I buy it?

I mean, I *bought* it, but at the current price for the 256 gig version I bought, I’m going to say no. For $200 off, that’s what I got it for, either. I really like the phone, but it’s not a significant upgrade from the S21. I think I probably spent a couple of hundred on repairing my S21 and was waiting to see how Android 13 works, and what the S23 brings.

But that’s just me talking about upgrading from a mostly working phone to another. This phone, the 256 gig version (I really record a shocking amount of video for how little actually makes it to Pocketables,) feels like it needs to be around $200 cheaper as a base price, not as a promotional price. Remember, you’re getting datamined the hell out of Google for using their products, and that’s an ongoing revenue stream.

Meh, I’m cheap. I loved my Samsung and felt no compelling reason to replace other than my screen was broken, I strongly suspected it would be like any other replacement screen issue where my phone ends up dead and I needed something there at all times due to work .

Get the 128 gigs down to the low-$700 range and we’ll talk. At $899 you are too high.