Recently got the Pixel 7 Pro, but the keyboard on this thing is wack. I liked the Samsung keyboard because you could long press most letters to get a special character.
I have the Pixel 4a (5g) and am also using gboard (should be the default for pixels). I am really happy with it, especially after some tweaking in the settings.
Maybe you can check the settings of GBoard. Usually there is an option to set the duration until the other layers of the key are shown. Depending on the currently active language you also have different special characters on a long-press action.