The wife had a Pixel 2xl which she loved till it needed a battery replacement 15 months in, she got a mate 20 pro and loved that, then the S20 which she absolutely hated because the battery life was terrible. She now has the S22U which she loves.
she usually has 30% battery left each day 0450-2230 and 7 hours SOT.
she said go with the Pixel 7 pro or S22U. I do enjoy iOS but I do miss being able to do some emulators for the N64 and customising my Home Screen to how I want it. My only bug bear was terrible battery life on S9 2/3 hours max SOT
Used to take off charge at 1700 use it’s for 3 hours of browsing and YouTube and it’d be on 15% battery by 0230.
IPhone 12 Pro same usage it needs a charge by 0530.
So hoping Pixel 7 pro is a good alternative .
Main things I use phone for is the camera and listening to music and web browsing.
I've got a Pixel 7 Pro and the camera is very good. It can be a little over-processed when the light is poor and I find the shutter speed can be a little slow, but there is a RAW mode and also apps that allow full manual control, which can be handy if you need to force a faster shutter speed (although I've not found one that can offer manual controls and shoot in RAW?)
Under good lighting the quality is excellent and there's a whole range of editing tools and filters available in the standard camera app. I believe when using x2 zoom it isn't just digitally enlarged from the main sensor but actually uses a combination of the main sensor and the x5 telephoto sensor. There's four shortcut focal lengths (0.5x, 1x, 2x, 5x) but you can also smoothly zoom through the whole range right up to 30x (digitally enhanced).
One thing that really amazed me was the Night Sight feature. Handheld you can get amazing shots from near darkness with almost no blur (there's a deblur tool that helps mitigate this anyway). I've posted an example below.
Browsing is fast and snappy and so far Bluetooth connection to my buds has been flawless. My fingerprint sensor has been perfect, even when my finger may be slightly contaminated. Battery lasts a long time for me, although I am careful not to leave it charging after 100% for what that may be worth.
I had a Sony Xperia XZ Premium for five years and didn't want to let go because it was such a good phone (tough as well!) and it still is so I donated it to my son. I was worried that I would struggled to find anything as good but the Pixel 7 Pro really has met the challenge, especially with the cameras. The dynamic range is far better with the Pixel as well, although I don't know if that's from the sensor or software trickery.
If it helps, the other phones I was looking at were the Pixel 6 Pro, Samsung S22+ and the Sony Xperia 1 IV and below is the pros and cons I gathered from various reviews, posts etc:
Google Pixel 6 Pro
Excellent cameras, especially the telephoto resolution
I've heard there can be WiFi and 5G connectivity problems?
Poor battery life
No card slot
Samsung S22+
Fast charging
Telephoto resolution not the best
Is it worth the highest cost?
No card slot
Sony Xperia 1 IV
Seamless optical zoom
Main camera is only 12MP
Has card slot
Overheating issues?
Fingerprint sensor issues?
Night Sight
Left is from normal camera, right is Night Sight mode
