Using Google Pixel 7 Pro without knowing it, it can

Using a phone for three weeks without knowing you’ve got Google’s latest unannounced flagship in your hands? One user claims it happened to her. How is that possible?

Pixel 7 (Pro) already on sale

Last Tuesday, we broke the news that a prototype of the Google Pixel 7 was for sale on eBay for a while. This was discovered by a Reddit user. The prototype on eBay looked a lot like the renders from the previously released teaser of the Pixel 7 (Pro) that Google showed earlier. The prototype also included photos that were presumably taken with a prototype of the Pixel 7 Pro. At least it seemed so based on a reflection in one of the images. The sale of the Pixel 7 did not go through and the ad has since been removed.

However, a new Reddit post now states that someone has bought a Pixel 7 Pro on Facebook Marketplace. This user, ‘AMC20_’, claims that the ad referred to a Pixel 6 Pro. She indicates that she did not immediately know that she had a prototype of the Pixel 7 Pro in her hands. She says this on Reddit:

”I’ve been using the device for about three weeks after I bought it on Facebook Marketplace. The phone was called a Google Pixel 6 Pro and this morning it started acting weird and I got to see bootloader screen. All my data was erased. Until this morning I had no problems whatsoever with the device.”

Google makes device useless

So she indicates that the phone suddenly became unusable. This happened on the day that news broke that individual prototypes of the Pixel 7 (Pro) have appeared on various auction websites. Google may have disabled the prototypes remotely. However, in the ‘Fastboot Mode menu’ we can now see the codename ‘Cheetah’. A code name for the Pixel 7 Pro. Presumably, the woman has indeed bought a real Google Pixel 7 Pro.

Have you ever bought a prototype smartphone by chance, without knowing it? Let us know in the comments below this article.

Read more about the Google Pixel 7 here