The Pixel 9 series is Google’s biggest Pixel paradigm shift in years. An increased price, a greatly modified design and a fleet of AI features await consumers. Our first impressions are positive, although some, admittedly bold, features have yet to prove themselves.
The Google Pixel 9 household has four family members, three of which we have already had at our disposal so far. Only the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the one that stands out most from the crowd, hasn’t yet arrived on the scene. This hands-on will thus focus on the Pixel 9, the 9 Pro and the 9 Pro XL.
Prices for all models are hefty, especially considering the frugal 128GB of storage that comes for the starting price. in Europe, the Pixel 9 is available starting at 899 euros, the 9 Pro at 1,099 and the Pro XL at 1,199. As mentioned, the Fold isn’t yet ready to be reviewed, but it will cost 1,899 euros (with admittedly a higher minimum of 256GB storage).
Tip: Google Pixel 9 line announced: foldable shipping to more European countries
The great news is that each device will launch in many more countries than before, including the Fold. Never before have Android users had so much choice from the Android maker itself. By the way, the Android running on these phones is by no means a stock version as some suggest is the case. The real-deal stock Android is a shadow of its former self without even a fully functional camera app. Google embellishes its own operating system as much as Samsung, Motorola or Nothing, but it does so with a precision that others lack.
Pixel is no longer just a software story
We’ll talk more about the software later, but first we’ll take a look at these “new-style” Pixels. This time, each variant is overtly premium. In addition to a sharp, bright screen, the devices feature nicely finished aluminum, glass and a friendly curve that keeps the palm of your hands safe. It seems that Google has ended up speaking to the same design firms as Apple and Samsung. For example, the screen’s curvature is emphatically iPhone and the aluminum bezel could have been plucked right off a Galaxy S24. Even the camera island, which used to be a camera “visor” on the 6/7/8 series, speaks a design language less unique to the Pixel than ever. However, it’s still easy to tell whether a Pixel is professional or not: the regular variant includes diffuse aluminum bezels; the Pros get a more reflective finish.
The design change is not necessarily detrimental to the Pixel’s overall visage, but rather a testament to the convergence in smartphone design that has been happening ever since the iPhone 4 launched back in 2010 and which accelerated once we got to the nearly-all-screen phones from around 2017. Only the foldable phones of Google, Motorola, Samsung and several Chinese competitors still truly innovate in this area. What remains for conventional smartphones is an emphasis on high-quality construction. That emphasis makes the Pixel 9 series attractive, user-friendly and, it has to be said, a tad generic. The phones do distinguish themselves in the software domain, today’s real battleground.
Nearly all puzzle pieces complete
Generative AI is causing a stir across every market category, and phones are no exception. We already have extensive experience with Galaxy AI, Samsung’s flagship smartphone this year. Apple is also jumping on the AI train with Apple Intelligence, making grateful use of OpenAI models and ChatGPT. Samsung is building some AI bits and bobs of its own, but leans heavily on Google for AI features inside Galaxy AI which are also ending up on Pixels. One such example is Circle to Search.
Google is evidently the only party that can go it alone in the AI battle, if Microsoft is to be believed. That translates to Gemini on Pixel smartphones appearing in numerous guises, from a (very chatty) chatbot to image editing. Google’s ambitions regarding Gemini are quite explicit: it’s aiming for the AI suite to eventually represent a complete AI assistant that lives inside your phone. Should Google Assistant be handing in its resignation already?
Not so. We quickly find our interaction with Gemini being somewhat awkward, as it’s by no means a drop-in replacement for Google Assistant yet. This mainly shows that the GenAI software is not really “finished” as of now. Google Assistant is still the go-to tool for voice controls. The Gemini Live chatbot, addressable via a single swipe from the bottom left of the screen, does not yet have too many capabilities. Want to launch an app, conjure up a route to work on Maps or simply increase the screen brightness? The response from Gemini varies, but always amounts to a friendly worded version of “that’s not my department.” This situation is strange to say the least, as you would at least want and expect Gemini to be able to refer to its colleague Google Assistant on its own. It doesn’t, which is a shame, because Gemini Live’s voice is a lot more believable than its predecessor, regardless of the specific voice you may choose from the handful of options.
Other problems also occur with some regularity. For example, Gemini is often extremely verbose. It also sometimes stops abruptly without finishing a sentence. Or, even worse, it interrupts us multiple times because we dawdled a few milliseconds too long between our words. Another strange phenomenon is that not all spoken questions may also be asked in text. In such an instance, Gemini simply refuses to answer. Work in progress, shall we say. It feels like an incomplete puzzle, and we’ll now have to hope for Google to deliver us the final pieces.
Support
In case anyone’s wondering how AI is going to make Google money, here’s the answer. Pro users get one year of free Gemini Advanced and 2TB of online storage, but after that, Google One AI Premium is set to cost you 21.99 per month. That’s pricey, but it runs on the assumption you’ll always get the best AI products Google has to offer. Either way, it gives users plenty of time to form an opinion about Gemini. Switching from 2TB of storage to 128GB after 12 months, however, is a major letdown, and that’s for a phone that costs at least $1,099.
Apart from that functionality, Google will support users of Pixel 9 phones for a long time. As with Samsung (and Apple), Google is ramping up software support to seven years of updates. The advantage for Pixel users is that Android versions debut on Google devices, so the very latest features are set to appear here first.
Since the Pixel 9 gets 12GB of RAM and the Pros a stunning 16GB of system memory, they should be up for the AI task in the future, too. RAM is usually the bottleneck for AI models, and it’s for a simple reason. If a model doesn’t fit inside the system memory, it quite simply will not function. The great thing about Gemini and AI features aimed at image editing is that it remains on-device. That’s an impressive achievement. The hard work done by AI researchers to achieve this should not be underestimated. For end users, it also removes many concerns of AI use, as privacy is not an issue if personal data stays on your own hardware.
Cameras: powerhouses as ever
Google Pixels have come in all shapes and sizes, but one aspect has crystallized into a consistent hallmark: the cameras. Even with identical, unimpressive-sounding sensors, Google continuously improved photo and video performance in its first few Pixel phones. Gradually, the hardware began to boast some great specs on top, and today’s Pixel 9 lenses are sizeable. A hefty horizontal “pill” sits atop the rest of the Pixel chassis to house them. The zoom lens in particular is nestled deep inside the phone, near the backside of the display.
With the regular Pixel 9, we get a 50 MP main camera and an ultrawide angle with 48 MP and a macro focus option. All zoom functionality on the non-Pro is therefore digital. It’s a smart compromise in our opinion: the photos at normal distances are indistinguishable from the Pro phone as we’re given the exact same hardware. The Pro variant also includes a 5x 48 MP telephoto lens. See below for a summary comparison.
Our daily driver in between review phones has long been the Pixel 7, and the Pixel 9 is its logical replacement upon renewing a two-year contract, especially if you’re used to the photographic features. The colors are more true to life than Samsung’s, sharper than the specs suggest, and suitable for all kinds of lighting conditions. We see that the colors are kept most in check with the main camera, while on brighter days the 5x zoom lets the colors bleed out somewhat, which one may describe as a “dirty lens” effect without actually losing sharpness.
An eternal question is whether 3x zoom or 5x zoom is the better pick. The former fits best for most scenarios where you want to take a picture at some reasonable distance, while the 5x excels when there is a substantial ground to cover in between you and your subject. The reality is that this is highly subjective. There will always be awkward in-between areas where you actually would have preferred a 2x lens or even a 10x like the Galaxy S23 Ultra included last year. Software improvements on the Pixel always produce an acceptable end result if you have reasonable expectations. On top of that, it regularly provides you with an outstanding picture where most other phones would have been merely serviceable.
Looking ahead
We still have some testing to do before we publish a full-fledged review. How does the Tensor G4 perform across the full spectrum of apps, for example? We’re also not yet passing judgment on battery life, which (due to switching between the 9 Pro XL, the 9 Pro and the 9) we haven’t really been able to test for a meaningful amount of time. The early signs are neither terrible nor amazing, however. Also, the high temperature is currently an issue, something that we’ll give a little more time to have resolved via updates. The phones weren’t actually released when we started using them, after all.
The Tensor G4 that resides in each Pixel 9 is reportedly not the chip that was intended to be there. The design that was supposed to be the G4 will presumably become the SoC for the Pixel 10 and will likely be christened the G5. This fact explains why the G4’s performance is just slightly inferior in benchmarks to last year’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and thus quite far behind the latest SoCs on the market. How much of that performance deficit you really notice in a world where smartphone chips are already blazing fast is highly questionable.
The bottom line is that the Google Pixel 9 series leaves a good first impression. We see what intentions Google has with Gemini and its own OS. The cameras are downright fantastic for such a small, slender device as the Pixel 9 Pro is, making Google’s product quite unique. That’s something Samsung can learn from, for example. There are a lot of positives to report already, but we have yet to figure out the overall package. To be continued.
Also read: Review: Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 – stagnation means decline