Prime decide
The Pixel 9 gives a vibrant OLED display, a quick new processor, helpful AI options, all-day battery life, and among the best cameras on a smartphone. It additionally guarantees safety updates till fall 2031.
The Google Pixel 9 is a premium cellphone that provides the very best Android expertise. The brand new Pixel has been redesigned with flatter sides, thinner bezels, a brighter show, and a brand new oval-shaped digicam bar, although the results of these modifications and upgrades is a barely heavier cellphone. It has a good looking OLED display, a brand new Tensor chip, a superb 50-megapixel major digicam, a sharper 48-megapixel ultrawide digicam, a sooner fingerprint reader, helpful AI options, and an all-day battery. And Google ensures software program updates for its newest Pixel telephones till the autumn of 2031.
The Pixel 9’s {hardware} appears like a flagship cellphone. Google’s telephones have been made with premium supplies because the Pixel 6, nevertheless it was laborious to inform by taking a look at them. The Pixel 9 modifications that, with a soft-touch matte again, a matte steel end, rounded corners, flat sides, and a brand new elongated, brushed steel digicam bar protruding from the rear. The Pixel 9’s redesign provides just a few grams in weight from its predecessor, nevertheless it feels extra luxe than another Pixel cellphone has.
Nonetheless, it does make the Pixel 9 extra more likely to slip out of your arms and its rear extra vulnerable to selecting up scratches from keys, each of which occurred a number of occasions all through my testing interval. The cellphone additionally has a brand new modem that ought to alleviate points some customers had with poor connection and dropped calls. Though we haven’t skilled these issues, we’ll proceed to do long-term testing and share our outcomes.
It has a barely bigger and far brighter show. The Pixel 9’s display is barely bigger than that of the Pixel 8, rising from 6.2 inches to six.3 inches with a 1080 x 2424 decision. This up to date OLED display has the identical deep blacks and 60 to 120 Hz refresh charge. And it’s additionally obtained a noteworthy increase to brightness, now reaching as much as 2,700 nits of most out of doors brightness—an enormous enhance from the Pixel 8’s 2,000 nits. (A nit is the unit of measurement that describes the brightness of a display—the upper the variety of nits, the brighter the show.)
Google’s newest chip makes use of extra RAM to run extra AI-based options. The Pixel 9’s new Tensor G4 processor and 12 GB of RAM (up from 8 GB on the Pixel 8) supplies a virtually lag-free expertise with Google’s many AI options, which incorporates voice typing, Audio Magic Eraser, Pixel Studio, and Gemini Assistant, to call just a few. The Tensor 4 chip hasn’t gotten a significant efficiency bump over the Pixel 8. But it nonetheless does a superb job of powering the Pixel’s speech recognition, Google Assistant and Gemini AI options, picture processing, multitasking, and taking part in graphic-heavy video games, like Name of Obligation: Cell and Diablo Immortal.
The Pixel telephones proceed to take the very best pictures. The Pixel 9 makes use of the identical 50-megapixel major digicam because the Pixel 8, which stays our favourite cellphone digicam by way of coloration temperature, reliability, polish, and ease of use. However because of its new 48-megapixel ultrawide sensor with a barely decrease aperture, wide-angle pictures captured by the Pixel 9 at the moment are sharper than ever. The Pixel telephones proceed to shine with crisp and vibrant low-light pictures, though at this level, the Pixel 9 takes solely marginally higher pictures than the competitors. The Pixel 9 additionally will get a brand new UI in its Panorama mode to information much less skilled photographers, and it provides Evening Sight help for low-light, wide-format pictures.
Add Me is our favourite new photograph characteristic. Add Me means that you can take group pictures with out a tripod or another person taking pictures pictures. The method includes taking a primary shot, then passing the cellphone to another person. Then Google makes use of a mixture of AR and AI to create a clear template of the primary shot to border the second shot. This characteristic isn’t good—typically you must retake the primary shot, and if the themes are too shut, you may see the 2 pictures merging awkwardly. However when it comes collectively, the outcomes are spectacular.
Reimagine is a brand new characteristic in Google’s Magic Editor software program that means that you can change a specific a part of your photograph. You may add fireworks or mountains to your clear skies, change your highway into water, and extra choices, however in apply, it really works higher on backgrounds and objects moderately than on folks.
The fingerprint reader is now sooner. Changing the optical fingerprint sensor on earlier generations of Pixel telephones, Google has geared up all Pixel 9 telephones with a brand new ultrasonic under-display fingerprint reader, which makes use of ultrasonic pulses to bounce off the ridges of your fingerprints. It’s extra correct, and it makes unlocking your cellphone sooner.
All Pixel 9 telephones will get updates till 2031. Google continues to supply longer software program help for its flagship smartphones to assist maintain your cellphone secure and up-to-date. All Pixel 9 telephones will obtain characteristic, software program, and safety updates till the autumn of 2031.
It has strong battery life and prices sooner than the Pixel 8. The Pixel 9’s 4,700 mAh battery will get a modest enhance from the Pixel 8’s 4,575 mAh battery. The brand new battery can deal with an hour of taking part in Name of Obligation: Cell, half an hour of web site navigation, some textual content messaging, practically an hour of YouTube movies, and some cellphone calls with beneath 20% of juice left earlier than bedtime. It retains the 27 W wired charging speeds from the Pixel 8 when utilizing a forty five W charger, however the Pixel 9 prices a bit sooner, hitting round 55% in half-hour.
It runs the most recent Android 15 software program. The Pixel 9 got here with Android 14 however has since been up to date to Android 15. The Pixel 9 launched three new apps: Pixel Climate, Pixel Studio, and Pixel Screenshots. The Pixel Climate app will get an up to date UI and provides a useful AI-based climate abstract. The Pixel Screenshots app homes all of your screenshots to recall related hyperlinks, calendar occasions, and extra accessible data, utilizing AI to extract data that you could search with Gemini; it’s helpful in the event you take screenshots of receipts and messages for future reference. The Pixel Studio app is an AI-based picture generator that makes use of text-based descriptions (however at the moment doesn’t create human pictures); it additionally creates stickers from chosen gadgets in a photograph inside your digicam roll.
The Pixel additionally has an AI-powered Name Notes characteristic, which lets you document and see summaries of your cellphone calls; that is helpful for conditions like getting a procuring checklist. This characteristic does not activate routinely; as an alternative, you’ll need to toggle the characteristic on once you join your name, and Google will then audibly notify you and your caller that the dialog is being recorded. The clearer the cellphone name, the higher your transcription outcomes are more likely to be, however we discovered it to be nearly fully correct.
The Android 15 replace consists of new theft-detection options, a personal app area, and enhanced safety for delicate system settings. The Pixel 9 collection additionally retains a lot of the options we cherished on Google’s older telephones. They embody the Recorder app, the Name Display characteristic for monitoring spam calls, Magic Editor, the Audio Magic Eraser, Finest Take (which helps you to create a composite photograph from a number of pics to seize the very best faces out of your topics), and Guided Body and the Magnifier app (for people who find themselves blind or have low imaginative and prescient).
Flaws however not dealbreakers
It prices greater than its predecessor. The Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 began at $600, and the Pixel 8 went as much as $700. Google has once more hiked the worth of its base mannequin Pixel by $100, so at $800, it’s the identical value as the bottom mannequin iPhone 16 and Galaxy S25. This implies the Pixel smartphones are on a par with opponents’ pricing—they’re not the extra inexpensive choice anymore.
Its movies go away one thing to be desired. Regardless of the digicam’s 50 megapixels, video recordings can usually look grainy, although you’ll nonetheless see good coloration replica.
