You don’t need them now, but you might need them in the future
After being announced at the Made by Google event on October 6, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro went up for sale starting October 13. The phones are a solid upgrade over their predecessors and fix many of their annoyances. With the devices officially shipping, Google has made the factory and OTA images for the Pixel 7 series available for download.
Factory images come in handy when you want to restore your Pixel 7 to its stock state after tinkering around with its system files. Or if your device is behaving weirdly and refusing to boot into the system for some reason. The factory images are also helpful when an OTA update is not showing up on your phone, but you want to install it as soon as possible. Currently, three images are available to download for the “panther” Pixel 7 and “cheetah” Pixel 7 Pro. The build ending in A5 is meant for the Pixel 7 units sold through Japanese carriers, while the .031 is the latest release rolled out as a day-one update for the phones. This is seemingly the global build that you can flash on your Pixel 7, irrespective of where it was purchased from.
Google uploads new factory and OTA images for Pixel devices every month containing the latest security patches. Do note that flashing factory images require you to unlock the phone’s bootloader. You can always relock it after that, though. If you are uncomfortable taking things into your own hands, you can use Android Flash Tool, which works with any web browser, to flash the system image. Flashing the OTA images is relatively easier and requires using ADB to sideload the files to your Pixel. But you must first enable USB debuting from the hidden Developer Options menu on the phone.
Download the OTA images for the Pixel 7 series from here, while the factory images are listed here for download.
