Leaked Pixel 7 / 7 Pro specs confirm Face Unlock and Movie Motion Blur

The countdown to October 6th, the day that the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro will be officially launched to the world – along with the Pixel Watch and other Nest devices – keeps getting closer. However, the closer the day gets, the more the rate at which we see leaks for these products accelerates.

The latest round of leaks includes a full spec sheet that a Taiwanese mobile carrier posted on their website and downloaded by an eagle-eyed user, and thus leaked for the world to see before it was promptly taken down. The leak has since then been posted to a Google News group on Telegram and disseminated all over. On this spec sheet (shown below translated to English), there is mention of a couple of unexpected features, a brand new one and one that isn’t new but was taken away after the Pixel 4.

We are, of course, talking about the Face Unlock feature, which debuted with the Pixel 4 and the famous “bathtub notch” that at the time was necessary to house the IR camera, dot projector, flood illuminator, and all everything else that was part of the Face Unlock package at the time. Unfortunately, Google did away with the notch on all its subsequent phones, and thus, with it went any possibilities for face unlock on Pixel phones.

This particular leak, however, confirms that Face Unlock is back, although we don’t know exactly how as we have clearly seen on pictures and renders that neither the Pixel 7 or 7 Pro sports a notch or cutout large enough to house all the previous hardware needed to accomplish that. This means that this may end up as a solution using the front-facing camera aided by Google software. We had already seen evidence of this in code that revealed Face Unlock may be coming to the Pixel 6 Pro, but it appears that Google decided to instead bring it to the Pixel 7 instead.

The other feature that also caught my eye is Movie Motion Blur. While I don’t know for sure what that is or how it will work, I imagine that this could be some sort of Cinematic Mode, similar to what is available on the iPhone. Another revelation is the inclusion of macro focus and 5x optical / 30x digital zoom on the Pro vs 4x optical / 20x digital zoom on the non-pro.

With the Made by Google event taking place in just a few days, we won’t have to wait long at all to find out if these leaked specs are the real deal. Although, because these came from an actual wireless carrier, I am inclined to think that they are. This raises the stakes and makes me even more excited about upgrading to the Pixel 7 from the Pixel 6. I would love to have Face Unlock back with an ultrasonic fingerprint reader as a backup authentication method.