Vodafone will expand the availability of Pixel 7 phones in Europe this year
“Vodafone plans to expand the availability of Pixel smartphone and wearable devices to additional markets in 2023,” writes the carrier in a press release for the European market. This gives hope to Pixel fans, since even though Google expanded sales to 10 markets on the Old Continent, many regions still are not served by the search giant.
Unfortunately, Vodafone doesn’t say which markets will be covered. The carrier has networks in several countries and partnerships with carriers in a number of other countries. Wikipedia has a handy list. We marked the countries where the Pixel is already available in bold, the others are possibilities for expansion.
| Vodafone networks in Europe | |||||
| Majority-owned | Partnerships | ||||
| Albania | Czech Republic | Austria | Belgium | Bulgaria | |
| Germany | Greece | Channel Islands | Croatia | Cyprus | |
| Hungary | Ireland | Denmark | Estonia | Finland | |
| Italy | Netherlands | France | Iceland | Latvia | |
| Northern Cyprus (indirectly owned) | Portugal | Lithuania | Luxembourg | North Macedonia | |
| Romania | Spain | Norway | Russia | Serbia | |
| Turkey | United Kingdom | Slovenia | Sweden | Switzerland | |
| Ukraine | Bosnia & Herzegovina | Montengro | |||
Even better, this expansion includes not just the Pixel 7 and 7 Pro phones, but the Pixel Watch and Pixel Buds as well.
Vodafone and Google also partnered on improving the default text messaging on all Android phones with the adoption of the RCS-based Messages by Google app (powered by Google’s Jibe Cloud). Compared to the older SMS/MMS, RCS allows sending high quality photos and videos, has enhanced group messaging, supports encryption for one-on-one chats and has a number of features that gives businesses a richer communication channel with their customers.
The carrier is also making Android TV the preferred platform for its Vodafone TV set top boxes. This will give users additional entertainment options with access to the apps and games available on the Google Play Store. The “Chromecast built-in” feature will also be enabled, so users will be able to easily cast photos, videos and music from their phones to their TVs.
