I have a pixel 7a and the battery only lasts a few hours. Nobody is getting 7 years out of a phone

You can replace batteries in phones.

I managed to squeeze 5 years out of a $200 budget phone. 7 years on mid-range or flagship is trivial.

Especially as new Pixels have lots of features to improve battery longevity:

• charging only up to 80%,

• OLED display that turns off pitch black pixels. Many apps nowadays have pitch black themes, and you can set wallpapers to pitch black,

• limit display smoothness to 60 Hz,

• battery saving mode,

• dark mode,

• turn off background usage for individual or all apps

Did most of it. The battery lasted about 3.5ish years until it became a bit annoying without a powerbank/outlet near me.
7 years on the original battery is probably impossible if you use it moderately (not like the usual normie for just facebook, youtube and whatsapp and maybe a bit of browsing for 2-3h per day max).

Yea, my Pixel 7 that I bought in spring 2023 got a swollen battery. If I could have easily replaced it, no problem. But after watching a few repair tutorials it seemed way too difficult, so I just got a Fairphone 6+.

Switched to a P10 Pro from P7Pro due to storage and battery (new phone battery uses 10% ina day of idle. Old one consumed about 10% per hour. (Mostly) same apps).
If it wasnt for the storage I’d have replaced the battery…Would have been much cheaper.