7 Things We Want From the Google Pixel 7 and 7 Pro

pcmag.com:

Apple, Google, and Samsung dominate the US smartphone space, forcing the entire industry to pause and tune in during their often-live hardware launches. Samsung kicked things off in February this year with its Galaxy S22 lineup and followed that in early August with its refreshed Galaxy Z Flip and Fold devices. Apple is expected to debut the iPhone 14 family in early September. After that, it will be Google's turn. We expect the company to debut the Pixel 7 series in late September or early October. With this looming launch in mind, here are seven things we're hoping Google bestows upon its loyal Pixel users:

The Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, and Pixel 6a are all fantastic phones, but reviews (including ours) almost unanimously criticized them for weak cellular connectivity. At a base level your phone should do a good job of, well, being a phone. We hope Google will get out in front of this inadequacy with meaningful modem improvements. Most high-end smartphones incorporate Qualcomm's excellent X65 modem (which is baked into the current Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and 8+ Gen 1 platforms) and we hope Google follows suit, or, better yet, goes for the newer Snapdragon X70. We believe the Pixel 6 and 6 Pro relied on Samsung's Exynos 5123 modem in its Tensor SoC, so it's a bit of a toss-up whether or not Google will switch modem suppliers.

Bluetooth behavior on Pixel 6 phones wasn't necessarily a disaster, but it wasn't impressive either. If you spend any time reading user complaints (such as this one(Opens in a new window) or this one(Opens in a new window)) about the Pixel 6, you might notice a reoccurring issue with headphones losing connectivity. Bluetooth headphones are incredibly popular—even Google sells a line of Pixel Buds—so we'd