US prices and pre-order deals leak out for Google's Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro
While Google hasn't exactly played coy with stock Android lovers in the last few months, confirming a wealth of Pixel 7 and 7 Pro information well in advance of the two's detailed October 6 announcement, there are still plenty of important questions unanswered.
Officially, that is, because the crucial matter of the commercial release date, for instance, may have been unofficially settled earlier this week, with one very trustworthy source now claiming a final solution to the US pricing conundrum as well.
Reasonable costs and sweet gifts
Much like last year's Pixel 6 and 6 Pro, the internally upgraded and visually refined Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are expected to start at $599 and $899 respectively stateside.
That's $599 for the more compact and slightly lower-end Google Pixel 7 model with 128 gigs of internal storage space (we presume) in your choice of Snow, Obsidian, and Lemongrass colors, while the Pixel 7 Pro is likely to fetch $899 in an entry-level 128GB configuration of its own (probably packing some extra RAM, among others) and three different paint jobs (Obsidian, Hazel, and Snow).
Incredibly enough, Android Police's very reputable founder, Artem Russakovskii, also claims to have heard from a 100 percent trusted source of some early Pixel 7 and 7 Pro gift card offers.
Specifically, it appears that Target is planning to sell the smaller of the two new vanilla Android-powered handsets alongside a $100 coupon while throwing in a $200 (!!!) store voucher with Pixel 7 Pro pre-orders.
Although it's currently unclear if these launch promotions will have any sort of strings attached, our guess is no and we wouldn't be surprised if other retailers offered the exact same kind of freebies for the duration of the two phones' pre-order period.
This is set to start shortly after the big announcement event on October 6 and might conclude anywhere between October 13 and 18, with more and more rumors "floating around" the latter date.
Pixel 7 and 7 Pro vs the competition
Before making any kind of comparison with any of their rivals for the title of best phone available this holiday season, we should probably break down the full pricing structure of the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro starting from the aforementioned rumored $599 and $899 tags.
These are just educated guesses, of course, but, well, they seem pretty easy to get right at the moment:
- Pixel 7 - $599 with 128GB storage and 8GB RAM; $699 with 256GB storage and 8GB RAM.
- Pixel 7 Pro - $899 with 128GB storage and 12GB RAM; $999 in a 256GB/12GB configuration; $1,099 with 512GB storage and 12GB memory.
A good comparison starting point might be Samsung's "vanilla" Galaxy S22, which typically costs $799.99 despite rivaling the non-Pro Pixel 6 pretty much directly and only narrowly beating it in a head-to-head battle of raw power, screen quality, camera performance, and battery life. The state-of-the-art S22 Ultra is also a lot more expensive than the Pixel 6 Pro (and consequently, the 7 Pro), at $1,200 and up, and not even the underwhelming $1,000 Galaxy S22+ is priced very competitively.
We can pretty much say the same things about Apple's $799 iPhone 14, $999 iPhone 14 Pro, and $1,099 iPhone 14 Pro Max, while the $899 non-Pro iPhone 14 Plus is arguably not a worthy alternative for the ultra-high-end Pixel 7 Pro. Not as far as things like design, camera versatility, and screen fluidity are concerned, and if Google manages to drastically improve the performance of its in-house Tensor processor for this year's second generation, the Pixel 7 duo could prove to be a major box-office hit. Especially if today's rumor about those killer introductory deals also pans out.
Things that are NOT allowed: