Google Pixel 7 Pro drama as leaked Android phone gets remote wiped

How about this for a slice of Android phone drama. An unreleased Google Pixel 7 Pro handset was accidentally shipped out to a buyer of a Google Pixel 6 Pro.

The handset was then photographed and booted up to reveal the device's codename, which was 'Cheetah', as well as its OS, which was shown to be the also yet to be released Android 13 Tiramisu.

Just imagine! You order last year's flagship and instead get this year's unreleased flagship.

Well, as detailed on Twitter, the recipient was very happy. But that happiness soon ended when, shortly after receiving the phone and taking pictorial proof, the phone got remote wiped.

Now the handset is "stuck in a bootloader" and can't be used, effectively being bricked.

As to how this happened in unknown. However, theories have since been postulated that the shipper of the phone was an OEM manufacturer who will be part of bringing the Pixel 7 range to market.

As for the remote wiping, a theory is that the shipper of the handset soon realised the terrible error they'd made, shipping out an unreleased Pixel 7 Pro instead of a Pixel 6 Pro, and issued a remote wipe command to be sent.

Dramatic then indeed, albeit not without an almost too serendipitous backstory. Indeed, there is the smell of elaborate fake about this – and we've seen many over the years here at T3. The fact a Pixel 7 Pro could indeed leak out like this seems quite far fetched after all, but as we've seen in the past, just because it is improbable doesn't make it impossible.

The fact that the recipient of the handset got pictorial proof of the phone's device details, and a video showing the phone post-wipe stuck in bootloader, does add credibility to this story, too.

Drama aside, though, this leak - if true - doesn't really add to what we know about the Google Pixel 7 Pro, as the phone has already been teased by Google visually, and it was obvious it was going to come running Android 13 Tiramisu as well.