And, unlike the comparable, one-hand-friendly iPhone XS, it’s cheap – at least by 20 flagship standards. It has the camera smarts and Android Pie-powered AI smarts of the Pixel 3 XL, without the awkward notch cut-out at the top.

The Google Pixel 3 is the ideal smartphone for anyone who cares about photo quality and isn’t satisfied with their phone’s picture-taking abilities today. And, as much as we laud the behind-the-scenes camera software and Night Sight mode in our tests, the app doesn’t have all of Samsung's and LG's neat camera app tricks. You’re also stuck with 64GB or 128GB – there’s no microSD card slot, and worse still, no headphone jack. Snapping 100 great photos in two hours seriously tanked our unit's battery. The battery falls short of larger phones at a 2,915mAh capacity, though it still offers all-day battery life with conservative use in our tests. You’re not going to get everything in this small package.

Looking for the Pixel 3's big brother? Check out our hands-on Google Pixel 3 XL review.

Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro buyers will therefore need to carefully choose a storage variant depending on their needs, since there's no option to increase the storage later. In addition, while the availability of cloud storage options partly mitigates the need for additional onboard storage, uploading and downloading media and other files is data intensive and can put off some users.

It is worth noting that Google has never offered microSD card slots with any of its Pixel devices, so it's not surprising that this year's models don't provide the feature.

Google's decision to skip the 512GB model in so many markets is particularly strange, given how some high-end smartphones, like the Galaxy S23 Ultra, are even offered with 1TB of built-in storage. It's not immediately clear if these markets will get the 512GB option in the future, but the unavailability of this option could be a deal-breaker for power users who require more storage in their phones. Unfortunately, the 512GB model is unavailable in most regions outside the U.S., including Europe and India.

Does google pixel have sd card slot