Few specifics about the Pixel 7 series have been published by Google, but we do know that working prototypes exist — one was even sold on eBay. The Google News Telegram group also exploited a bricked Pixel 7 Pro prototype to uncover additional details about the new devices.
The crew was able to recover boot logs despite the phone being bricked. They found the Cortex-A55 cores in the Tensor 2 chipset by combing through those. The new design (A510) is based on the ARMv9 architecture, and this is the final little core based on the ARMv8 architecture. Other CPU cores are likewise ancient ARMv8 designs, because the two architectures cannot coexist on one motherboard.
Additionally, the logs suggest that the Tensor 2 will continue to use the 2+1+1+4 CPU core configuration. Four A55 and two Cortex-A76 processors were on the original Tensor chip. The A55s and the two X1s will remain, as will the new X2 core, which is ARMv9-based. Since the original design made use of the older A76 cores rather than the more modern Cortex-A78, new medium cores are still a viable option for this platform (the last of the ARMv8 medium cores).
Because of this, the Tensor 2 chipset is unlikely to bring significant advances in CPU-bound activities. This year’s Tensor will be significantly faster than the original, which was already lagging behind when it was released last year.
We don’t yet know what Google has in store for the GPU and other hardware, however. Google’s ISP and TPU handle image processing, which is one of the company’s secret weapons (Tensor Processing Unit).
In any case, the prototype unit included a Samsung S6E3HC4 display screen. Although the S6E3HC3 display of the Pixel 6 Pro is likely to be replaced, we expect only minor improvements in resolution and refresh rate (1,440 x 3,120px, 120Hz).
Both Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro are referred to as “Cheetah” in the logs, confirming their code names. In addition, there’s “Felix,” which is most likely an unannounced version of the Pixel 7a. In October, Google is anticipated to release the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro (along with the Pixel Watch).