New leak confirms aggressive Pixel 7 pricing to keep pace with last year’s phones

Each year, phone makers update their main device lines, and most years, the price attached to those phones increases little by little. It’s how we arrived at $1000 phones a few years ago and how we knew it wouldn’t easily go back from there. In today’s world, high-end flagship phones regularly cost north of $1000 and anything less has become far more interesting as a result.

So last year, when Google reinvented its phone line a bit with the arrival of the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro, we all debated quite a bit about how much the devices would cost at launch. Again, with the prevailing wisdom that flagship phones generally go for more than $1000, most of us thought the Pixel 6 Pro would fall in that same category.

Thankfully, it didn’t, and Google bucked the trend a bit by pricing the Pixel 6 at $599 and the Pixel 6 Pro at $899, keeping both devices solidly under the $1000 mark and making them a bit more intriguing at the same time. After all, Google’s hardware has always been solid, and to finally get a ‘Pro’ version of Google’s own phone for $899 or the standard setup for $599 felt like a win right out of the gate and likely helped bolster sales a bit, too.

Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro to follow suit

While no one would have been shocked if Google pushed the prices up just a bit for the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, it looks as if that won’t be the case for this year’s Google-made phones. Instead, it looks as if the same prices are very likely, and there may even be some deals to be had at the register right away. According to Artem Russakovskii (founder of Android Police) on Twitter:

In the thread above, it is revealed that the Pixel 7 will start at $599 and the Pixel 7 Pro will start at $899. The colors line up with what we see on the Google Store and Artem reports that the launch date is set in Target’s system as October 13th. There have been rumors of a delayed October 18th launch, too, but it remains unclear which is correct for now.

Additionally, it seems Target will offer a $100 gift card with the purchase of a Pixel 7 and a $200 gift card with the purchase of the Pixel 7 Pro. It wasn’t clarified if those gift cards are for outright purchase or signing up with a carrier, so that will have to be sorted next month at launch time. If Target is ready to part with that much credit right at release, that means carrier deals will likely be robust, too.

We’re not far out from knowing all of this as fact, but I feel quite confident that these prices are exactly what we’ll see when Google formally puts the new Pixels into the world. I love that we’ll see iteration and generational upgrades without a price shift from Google for their 7th attempt at an in-house smartphone. I think the pricing will go a long way to keep existing Pixel users happy and hopefully draw quite a few new folks into the fray as well.