We already know that Google is working on the Pixel 7 series. The company didn’t need to confirm that, but it did back in May when announced that both Pixel 7 and Pixel Watch are coming later this year. As usual, the Pixel 7 smartphones are leaking around. Recently, a prototype even made its way to the realms of eBay. Recently, another prototype, a bricked Google Pixel 7 pro, was used by the Google News-Telegram Group. Thanks to this, the folks were able to uncover some info about the upcoming models.
Tensor 2 will not bring a significant jump in performance for the Pixel 7 series
The Pixel 7 Pro was bricked, but apparently, in a soft brick mode. The group managed to extract boot logs, combining those, they’ve discovered that the Google Tensor 2 chipset features ARM Cortex-A55 cores. These are usually the options for the “low-performance” or “power-efficient” cluster in Octa-Core arrangements. However, there is a big problem with this. If there is a Cortex-A55 cluster inside the Tensor 2, then, it uses the old ARMv8 architecture. Currently, flagship chipsets have already made their move to the ARMv9 architecture, and that one has the ARM Cortex-A510 core standard. As a result, the Tensor 2 will be behind the competition in terms of performance since it uses ARMv8-based performance cores.
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The logs also revealed that the Tensor 2 will keep the 2 + 2 + 4 CPU core configuration. The original had two Cortex-X1 cores, two A76, and four A55 cores. As a result, the highest performance the Tensor 2 will bring is achieved with the same Cortex-X1, as the X2 uses ARMv9 architecture. The A55 cores are also there, so the only possible “upgrade” will be if Google decides to swap the old A76 cores for the A78 cores in the Pixel 7 series. The ARM Cortex-A78 cores are the latest ARMv8 medium cores.
In the end, the Pixel 7 series with Tensor 2 SoC will not bring significant performance increases. Perhaps, the company will improve things with GPU and other co-processors. Anyway, Google’s goal with the Pixel series was never to offer the highest performance. The prototype also has an S6E3HC4 display from Samsung. It’s a slight upgrade over the Pixel 6 Pro, but we expect the phone to keep a 120 Hz refresh rate and QHD+ resolution. Although some rumors suggest a Full HD+ panel.
