It was a fairly unexciting conclusion. When I reviewed the Google Pixel 7 Pro last year, I walked away with the impression of a phone that was a bit better in some important ways but wasn’t quite the superintelligent, time-saving device that Google claimed it was. It was just a good smartphone, not a smarter smartphone.

But that was over six months ago, and one of Google’s selling points for its Pixel line is how its devices continue to gain features and smarts over time. Then there are things like Direct My Call — a feature that transcribes automated phone tree menu options — which get better as more people use them, so they’re not always at peak potential right at launch.

For all of these reasons, I thought it was worth revisiting the Pixel 7 Pro in between the regularly scheduled programming of Hot Foldable Summer. What I’ve found — and I’m sorry to disappoint with another predictable conclusion — is a little more of the same. Some things got a bit better, but for the most part, the things I liked about the Pixel 7 Pro the first time around are the things I like now.

It’s not for lack of smarts. More often than not, the limitations it faces are a result of the dumbness of the world around it and the systems that it must work within. And then there’s the world itself: it hasn’t stood still in the last six-plus months, either. As the Pixel attempts to block or smooth away some of the nuisances of daily life, the rest of the world wises up and finds new ways to bother us.

Take Direct My Call as an example. It debuted with the Pixel 6 series, but the Pixel 7 Pro introduced a new version of the feature where it sometimes shows the phone tree menu options on-screen before they’re spoken. That’s a really clever way to save a few seconds of time, and it works well with a few major toll-free numbers that Google suggested I try with it. But even now, I still can’t get it to work with the places I regularly call, like my pharmacy or PetSmart.

Thinking that there might not be enough Pixel owners calling Bartell’s pharmacy regularly, I tried Walgreens and ran into a different problem: a robot. Rather than present you with a list of options to choose from, Walgreens does that cute thing where it asks, “In a few words, tell me how I can help,” or something to that effect. The Pixel 7 Pro is no help here, at least not now. I’m sure in the future, our phones will employ robots to talk to the other robots for you, which is truly the dream — robots all the way down and all — but at the moment, I still have to yell “talk to the pharmacist” into my phone without the benefit of special tech features.

Then there’s the spam. The Pixel 7 Pro is good at detecting and blocking spam calls, but not so much for texts. While testing the phone again, a couple of scam texts with fake Instagram password reset requests made it through unscathed. They were convincing enough that I questioned for a second whether someone was trying to access my Instagram account, but as best I can tell, that wasn’t the case. In that instance, all I needed was a good old-fashioned instinct to never trust anyone calling or texting me from an unusual number — not a fancy spam-detecting feature.

That wasn’t the only time that it turned out to be smarter to use my head than rely on my phone to outsmart the rest of the world. The Pixel 7 Pro is generally a good travel companion. It’ll put your flight info in At a Glance, and you can easily add your boarding pass to Google Wallet — I was searching the Delta app for an “add to Wallet” option, but as it turns out, all you need to do is take a screenshot, and it will generate a pass you can add. Clever.

Where that system falls down is when other things change — namely, my gate. I was confidently walking from security toward the gate on my digital boarding pass when I glanced at a screen nearby. It seemed funny for there to be another Delta flight to JFK leaving at the same time as my flight. Turns out, that wasn’t the case; my gate had just changed, and the boarding pass in my wallet hadn’t updated. I couldn’t see a way of refreshing the pass itself, so I opened the Delta app, refreshed the page, and there it was: my new gate confirmed. I would have walked clear across the concourse wasting minutes — minutes! — of time that I could have spent ordering a latte if I hadn’t happened to glance at a board.