Seller Mistakenly Ships Unreleased Google Pixel 7 Pro To A Customer Who Purchased Pixel 6 Pro

What are the odds that you go online to purchase a mobile device only to receive an unreleased version?

That’s the story @soulpee, who is located Accra, Ghana, shared on Twitter on Monday.

Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL Google is still ramping up sales for its Pixel 6 series, the Mountain View, California-based company’s first devices using its Tensor processor, but it seems the company is more than ready with the device’s successors — Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro.

It appears the yet-to-be-released devices are already in the hands of technicians or testers, who use them daily to make sure they are ready for market. But one of the Pixel 7 series may have mistakenly found its way into the hands of a lucky shopper.

About40 Clan (@soulpee), who seemed to be in the know of the incident, wrote that someone bought a slightly used Pixel 6 Pro on Facebook Marketplace but received a package worth more than what he had paid for.

“My friend bought a slightly used Pixel 6 pro on Facebook Marketplace in the states about two months ago. Phone came in last month and looked weird as hell. Thought this was some tiptoe lane foul move but turned out, the shipper made a mistake and shipped an unreleased Pixel 7 pro,” @soulpee wrote.

Clearly stunned, @soulpee explained, “We couldn’t believe our eyes. A phone yet to be released, in our hands right here in Accra lol camera on the device was amazing!!. But the fun was short-lived. Last week, Google sent a remote wipe command and cleared the Android 13 off the phone. Now it’s stuck in a bootloader.”

The lucky individual is now looking for ways to bring the device back to life after Google cleared the operating system and shut them out of using it.

“We posted on XDA developers looking for solutions to revive it and they even couldn’t believe that we had the phone. Told us to take pictures of it with a date and ‘not fake’ written on a piece of paper as proof,” @soulpee added.

This isn’t the first-time unreleased devices have found their way into the public.

In 2011, an Apple Inc. AAPL employee left his prototype iPhone 5 in a tequila bar in San Francisco after an identical situation arose with the iPhone 4 the year before.

Before Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. (KRX: 005930) officially unveiled the Galaxy S22 Ultra on Feb. 9, real-life images of the device surfaced online, reportedly from someone who had access to it.

With a similar design to its Pixel 6, Google’s Pixel 7 is expected to launch in October with upgraded cameras, an improved processor and its latest operating system — Android 13.

Link to Twitter posts: https://twitter.com/soulpee/status/1546565513702260742?s=20&t=Khwsj9NNTgeipCnkhDQe3g

Featured photo by @soulpee